by Jillian Ambrose Energy correspondent on (#57TYE)
Friends of the Earth seeks judicial review, saying aid deal contradicts climate commitmentsEnvironmentalists at Friends of the Earth will mount a legal challenge against the government’s decision to offer $1bn in financial support to a major fossil fuel project in Mozambique that they say is “incompatible” with the Paris climate agreement.The green group will go to the high court this week to seek a judicial review into the government’s decision to use taxpayer money to “worsen the climate emergency” by helping to finance a $20bn gas project on the Mozambican coast.Related: Boris Johnson poised to stop UK funding overseas fossil fuel projects Continue reading...
Economists have conducted a cost-benefit analysis of the blanket shutdown. It makes for grim readingCancer treatments cancelled. Children deprived of schooling. More cases of domestic abuse. Continued restrictions on personal freedom. Over and above the direct damage caused to the economy, the collateral damage from the Covid-19 pandemic has been colossal.And the crisis is not over by any means. Travel restrictions come and go with mind-boggling frequency. Local quarantining has replaced national lockdowns. Every leading policymaker in the UK, from the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, downwards, knows that the job losses to come threaten to leave permanent scars. Continue reading...
Mass unemployment and soaring debt will place acute pressure on the relationship between prime minister and chancellorBoris Johnson told the most recent meeting of his cabinet that they had been “sailing into the teeth of a gale” before promising them “there will be brighter days and calmer seas ahead”. Which would make me very nervous about venturing out on a boat with this prime minister. He clearly does not check the weather forecast. What lies ahead is not calmer seas, but even more turbulent waters. The government is heading into a storm the like of which neither he nor anyone else on his inexperienced crew has ever endured.There is a vast black cloud massing on the near horizon. It is the looming horror of mass unemployment. The virus-induced slump has already had a nasty effect on many Britons, but for quite a lot of voters the experience has not yet been as horrible as they may have first feared. The impact has been softened by improved welfare payments, job-retention schemes, business rescue packages and other emergency measures. This has delayed the reckoning. Though the public has taken an increasingly dim view of the government’s handling of the epidemic, Tory MPs have been able to clutch to the consolation that their party has maintained a lead over Labour on economic competence. They cannot be sure that will endure as support schemes unwind. One veteran Tory remarks of the cabinet: “This is a generation of politicians who have no experience of mass unemployment. If we go into Christmas with three million people unemployed, that will be beyond ghastly. The psychological shock will be enormous.” Continue reading...
No 11’s warnings of ‘bombshell’ tax rises may have been confected. But if they were true, they would be a mistakeCaught on the steps of Downing Street, Rishi Sunak had a message to send last week. Whether or not the lapse was deliberate, the capture of the chancellor’s notes by a press photographer played a useful role in laying the ground for his autumn budget.There would be no “horror show of tax rises with no end in sight”, read the note Sunak was taking with him to a meeting of nervous backbench Tory MPs, unsettled that the party of low taxes was on the road to embracing Corbynomics.Sunak has developed a reputation as a savvy media operator. After the whipping-up of a media storm, modest tax rises will sound much better to the Tory faithful Continue reading...
Trump, Putin and Xi all want to make Europe less powerful and united. Britain’s departure has offered them succourWhen Brexit happens, “the EU will no longer exist”. So said Nigel Farage to Michel Barnier, who was to become the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, a few days after the 2016 referendum.Barnier revealed this recently at the end of an interview with the French journalist Marion van Renterghem, about which she writes in the current issue of the New European.Brexit weakens the country in a world where the geopolitical rivalry between the US, Russia and China is becoming ever more menacing Continue reading...
We are eight weeks from a momentous election. If Joe Biden wins, he must work to redistribute income – and powerOn Labor Day weekend, eight weeks before one of the most consequential elections in American history, it’s useful to consider the inequalities of income and wealth that fueled Donald Trump’s victory four years ago – and which are now wider than ever.Related: Speaking for Myself review: Sarah Sanders writes one for the Trump teamTrump speaks the language of authoritarian populism but acts in the interests of America’s emerging oligarchyRelated: Wildfires rage, Covid spreads: in California, life as we knew it has disappeared | Dana FrankRobert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a columnist for Guardian US Continue reading...
With pent-up demand and the stamp duty holiday sending the cost of homes soaring, we look at the groups and sectors that stand to gain or lose outUK house prices have hit a record high since the lifting of lockdown, after the fastest monthly growth in property values in August since 2004, fuelled by the release of pent-up demand and the government’s stamp duty cut.Despite Britain plunging into the deepest recession in modern history in the second quarter, estate agents report a surge in interest from those with the financial security to move, and from those whose priorities have been changed by Covid-19. There are, however, winners and losers in this rapidly moving market, as Covid-19 creates a period of boom and bust. Continue reading...
I was a student last time, an optimist who believed education would be my ticket out of povertyRecently I found myself binge-watching Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares USA. Those first episodes are pre-2008, so often a very ordinary person will casually tell Gordon, “I’m in $1m of debt, chef” – a reminder of irresponsible lenders and the economic chaos that was just around the corner.I was on season four when the news alert came in: we’re in another recession, the deepest yet. This will be my third. I don’t remember the first one (1990-91) because I was a baby hurling bowls of mush (a fair response to a recession, if you ask me).Related: Fight or flight? A zombie survival game taught me a lot | Coco Khan Continue reading...
Employers added 1.4m new jobs, a number that was markedly lower than in recent months – 1.8m in July, 4.8m in June and 2.5m in MayThe pace of recovery in the US jobs market slowed again in August as the coronavirus’s impact on the economy appeared to be broadening.Employers added 1.4m new jobs and the unemployment rate dropped to 8.4% last month, dropping below 10% for the first time since the pandemic took hold, the labor department announced on Friday.Related: Stock markets fall as investors sell off tech stock amid US job fears Continue reading...
A post-pandemic expansion – if there is one – may take years to meet the definition of recoveryThe next few months will tell us a lot about the shape of the coming global recovery. Despite ebullient stock markets, uncertainty about Covid-19 remains pervasive. Regardless of the pandemic’s course, therefore, the world’s struggle with the virus so far is likely to affect growth, employment and politics for a very long time.Let’s start with the possible good news. In an optimistic scenario, regulators will have approved at least two leading first-generation Covid-19 vaccines by the end of this year. Thanks to extraordinary government regulatory and financial support, these vaccines are going into production even before the conclusion of human clinical trials. Assuming they are effective, biotech firms will already have some 200m doses on hand by the end of 2020, and will be on track to produce billions more. Distributing them will be a huge undertaking in itself, in part because the public will need to be convinced that a fast-tracked vaccine is safe. Continue reading...
The ex-Australian PM is a political evangelist for free trade who has got three big trade deals over the lineIt is often said, in a phrase once attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, that there are three categories of mistruths: lies, damned lies and statistics. By the same token there are three types of geeks: geeks, super-geeks and trade negotiators.Trade negotiators know the difference between the bound and applied tariff on imports of cars into Brazil. They know the quota for frozen lamb that can imported into the EU from New Zealand. They know their way around all 22,500 pages of commitments made by different countries at the end of the Uruguay round of trade talks in 1993. These people are experts and, despite what the health secretary, Matt Hancock, has said, Tony Abbott is not one of them.Related: What hiring a failed Australian prime minister tells us about corrupt Britain | Nick Cohen Continue reading...
As online retail booms, distribution centres are hiring – and the workers they depend on could organise for a better dealEvery day we hear of more redundancies as the country slides further into a pandemic-induced economic crisis. But there is another storyline playing out in warehouses and distribution centres across the UK: not of layoffs but of hiring sprees.Last week, Tesco announced it is planning to permanently employ 16,000 workers to staff its expanded online shopping operation. Amazon is reported to have just rented a 2.3m sq ft distribution centre on the outskirts of London. Informed estimates put the likely workforce employed there at over 1,000. While employment in most of the economy is contracting, logistics is booming.Related: Low demand for UK office workers reveals ‘asymmetric recovery’Related: No internships, no entry-level work: under-25s fear Covid jobs squeeze Continue reading...
The coronavirus crisis provides an opportunity to stop two centuries of decline. But that’s going to take a lot of courageThe day the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic was also the occasion of Rishi Sunak’s budget. Announcing an extra £12bn to fight the virus, Britain’s newly appointed chancellor said the measures were “temporary, timely and targeted”.That was less than six months ago, but it now feels like a long time. Within days of the budget, Sunak’s three-Ts approach became redundant. The economy was in a deep freeze, and the country had gone into full lockdown. Continue reading...
Greater London, where number of closed outlets has increased by almost two-thirds, is hardest hit by riseThe number of empty shops on UK high streets has risen to its highest level in six years as city centres, and especially London, suffer from a dive in visitor numbers.Nearly 11% of shops remained vacant in July compared with 9.8% in January, with the number of empty premises rising in six out of 10 UK regions, according to retail analysis firm Springboard. Greater London suffered by far the worst blow, with empty shops increasing by nearly two-thirds. Continue reading...
Even as the economy sinks, the property market keeps surging. It sounds like good news, but is more likely a disaster in the makingUp, up and away! The rest of the economy is rapidly heading south, yet the property market keeps on rising. House prices hit a record high last month, according to Nationwide building society, and are increasing at the fastest rate since 2004. The news is striking, but it fits with reports of a “frenzy” in the market, where homes are selling at their asking price or more, and inner-city households are moving out to the suburbs and the countryside in search of gardens and home-office space. Back in July, the Bank of England’s chief economist, Andy Haldane, promised a V-shaped recovery. Two months later, that forecast has failed to apply to almost every sector – apart from asset markets.Some of this is a rebound in activity after lockdown, when property viewings and transactions came to a halt. But estate agents and chartered surveyors can also thank Rishi Sunak for his suspension of stamp duty on properties worth less than £500,000. Most of all, they owe the Bank a debt of gratitude for flooding markets with ultra-cheap money in response to the pandemic. Indeed, the state’s response to Covid-19 resembles, in some key aspects, its reaction to the banking crash of 2008. Ministers explicitly try to prop up the property market, while central bankers pump markets with money, much of which goes not into productive investment that might create jobs, but into speculative purchases of houses, artworks and shares. Continue reading...
The prime minister must choose between the promises he made to ‘red wall’ voters, Tory orthodoxy and heading into the political unknownOver the past four decades, Britain has been beset by slowing productivity, soaring inequality, an environmental emergency and repeated financial crises. Coronavirus has thrown into sharp relief existing disparities, and also created new ones. Those in power seem unwilling to deal with a broken system. They shy away from developing the ideas needed for reform. What’s offered is performance rather than policy. In this regard, Boris Johnson’s government excelled: it mouthed the words but didn’t mean any of them.That is why the leaks suggesting that the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is contemplating a radical and redistributive budget – with taxes raised on the wealthy, big businesses, pensions and motorists – have to be taken with a pound of salt. These proposals would be the right ones to enact and, if Mr Sunak were to implement them, he would be stealing shamelessly from Labour’s 2019 manifesto. The chancellor defied his reputation as a state-shrinking Brexiter and splashed out during the pandemic, saving companies from bankruptcy and many people’s jobs – including his own. Continue reading...
Readers on the viability of working four days to kickstart the economy and boost jobsThe report by the thinktank Autonomy (Four-day working week could create 500K new jobs in UK, study says, 30 August) is very welcome – and timely. An additional day’s leisure would not only massively improve work-life balance, and indirectly help areas such as childcare, but of course stimulate the leisure, retail and hospitality industries, which have been hit very hard by the pandemic.Retail practices have changed hugely from 50 years ago, when shops closed at 5pm (earlier on Saturdays) and Sunday was a barren day, with virtually no shops open and little entertainment available, to today’s seven-day-week economy, with the ability to purchase goods and services 24/7. Continue reading...
As Roberto Azevêdo steps down early, eight candidates step up for poisoned chalice of being WTO director generalWanted: someone to step in and turn around a big and failing multilateral organisation. The post involves relocation to Geneva where the successful candidate will require the cunning of a Machiavelli, the political skills of Nelson Mandela and the thick skin of a rhinoceros. Plus a good dollop of luck.The job description for director general of the World Trade Organization did not quite go like that, but none of the eight people who have put themselves forward to succeed Brazil’s Roberto Azevêdo are in any doubt as to the extent of the challenge.The eight candidates to be the next director-general of the World Trade Organization are: Continue reading...
As parliament returns, Boris Johnson’s government faces a set of challenges it is woefully ill-equipped to meetIn a cringeworthy social media stunt before the last election, Boris Johnson mimicked the famous cue-card sequence in the film Love Actually, itself a parody of Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues video. The prime minister’s scrawled series of messages conveyed the ultimately winning trope of “get Brexit done”. As parliament returns on Tuesday, and the nation braces for what is likely to be an autumn of considerable discontent, words from another Dylan classic, My Back Pages, seem to sum up Mr Johnson’s current situation: “My existence led by confusion boats, mutiny from stern to bow.”The now notorious sequence of Covid-related U-turns performed by the government reflects a chronic lack of planning and foresight. Failing to reconcile the twin priorities of safeguarding public health and protecting the economy, ministers have vacillated, prevaricated and lurched first in one direction and then the other. As the days begin to shorten, the sky is turning dark with chickens coming home to roost. Continue reading...
Data shows rise in transport, healthcare and construction jobs while ‘white-collar roles’ lag behindDemand for office workers in the UK is lagging behind other types of work, according to data that suggests the labour market is undergoing an “asymmetric recovery” after the near-total freeze in hiring during the coronavirus lockdown.The proportion of workers with new jobs in industries that mainly employ people in so-called white-collar roles – such as media, software and finance – has lagged behind other sectors despite the gradual return to workplaces, according to data from LinkedIn, the work-focused social network owned by Microsoft.Related: WPP reveals only 3% of UK staff regularly work from office Continue reading...
French economist admired by Xi Jinping says he will not cut sections on inequality in ChinaThe latest book by the French economist Thomas Piketty appears unlikely to be sold in mainland China after he refused requests to censor it.The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has expressed admiration for Piketty’s work, but Capital and Ideology, which was published last year, has not made it to the mainland China market due to sections on inequality in the country. Continue reading...
Several Conservative backbenchers argue that focus must be on supporting a continued economic recoveryThe chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has been urged not to introduce tax hikes in his November budget by Conservative backbenchers who argue they would damage economic recovery.The intervention followed speculation the Treasury could raise £20bn through extra levies to deal with the fallout from Covid-19.Related: Rishi Sunak urges diners to keep supporting eateries after Covid subsidy endsRelated: UK treasury minister calls for return to work to help economy recover from coronavirus Continue reading...
Modern monetary theory offers a radical solution but the SNP may be too economically conservative to try itOpinion polls suggest Scotland would vote decisively for independence if another referendum were held now. Brexit, which Scots rejected by a thumping majority, and Covid-19 have changed the political dynamics since 2014. Put simply, Scotland would rather be inside the European Union with Nicola Sturgeon in charge than outside it with Boris Johnson calling the shots.That, at least, is how things currently stand. The economic problems an independent Scotland might face, which were crucial in the 55-45% vote to stick with the union six years ago, no longer carry as much weight. Continue reading...
The e-commerce retailer is looking for £920m and a huge valuation from its stock market debut – but there are reasons to be waryWe are invited to view the imminent arrival on the London stock market of The Hut Group, a Manchester-based e-commerce retailer, as an uplifting story of smart technology, clever marketing and endless growth. Here’s a company that dodges Amazon’s thunderbolts and attracts some of the world’s biggest consumer companies – the likes of Nestlé and Procter & Gamble – to its “end-to-end” platform.In a retail world dominated by shop closures and redundancies, The Hut Group sings a different tune. It claims the flotation will create more millionaires than any other listing of a British company, thanks to founder and chief executive Matthew Moulding’s long commitment to employee share ownership.The notion that big brand owners will flock to use The Hut Group’s e-commerce platform has yet to be tested properly Continue reading...
Eat out to help out saw busy restaurants and extra spending generally, but looming job losses could mean the whole nation tightening its beltBritain loves a bargain – even, as it turns out, during a global health emergency. Dismissed as a gimmick at first, the government’s eat out to help out scheme has proved hugely popular, dishing up more than 64 million discounted meals so far – equivalent to almost one for every person in the UK – since its launch a month ago.When the scheme finishes on Monday, chancellor Rishi Sunak, will be able to say that his policy successfully encouraged people back into restaurants, pubs and cafes between Mondays and Wednesdays in August, serving up a much-needed boost to the economy, and to the embattled hospitality sector in particular.We need to see what the plan is for protecting economic capacity over the coming period Continue reading...
Central banks risk triggering a cascade of defaults if they ever raise interest rates againWhy would you want to own anything when you can rent? It is a question being asked of cash-strapped millennials whenever they think about hitting the high street.John Lewis is the latest to tell young people they can have it all, or in most cases the bare necessities of modern life, if they would just learn to lease or rent whatever it is they need – a computer, sofa or desk chair. Don’t wait, says the department store, until you have the savings to pay for something outright (which may be never happen). Overcome those silly concerns about student loans, mounting credit card debts and a lack of savings by signing one lease or rent deal after another to get whatever you need.A life spent moving from rented home to rented home is generally not the joyful, freewheeling experience some older people think it is Continue reading...
The future of the north Devon yard bought last week by Harland & Wolff will depend partly on Boris Johnson fulfilling his promises about a string of naval contractsIt has been a lonely few months for Clifford Edwards. For the past 18 months he has been the sole employee at Appledore shipyard, near Barnstaple in north Devon.Soon, though, Edwards will be working alongside colleagues again and the spookily quiet 118-metre dry dock will once more reverberate to the sounds of men and women toiling in heavy industry.The prime minister assured us that he would do everything to assure a line of projects Continue reading...
by Michael Sainato in Orlando, Florida on (#57ESE)
Facing massive medical and funeral bills, families, some of whom are out of work, are seeking help through fundraisersOn the morning of 19 August, 74-year-old Miguel Ramos passed away while hospitalized for Covid-19 in Orlando, Florida. His wife, Leticia, also tested positive and is currently fighting to recover.Facing thousands of dollars in funeral and medical expenses, their daughter Nohemi Ramos started a GoFundMe to try to raise money to cover some of the costs.Related: ‘Coming here is a necessity’: demand for food aid soars in US amid job lossesWe would have been able to cover the costs if we were working, but since everyone got sick at home, no one was able to work and bills kept coming Continue reading...
Chair Jerome Powell says inflation will be allowed to rise above 2% to boost employmentShare prices on Wall Street rose to a fresh high after the head of the US central bank paved the way for years of more pro-growth policies by softening its approach to inflation.Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said he and his policymaking colleagues in Washington had unanimously agreed that inflation would be allowed to rise above its 2% target for some time in order to boost employment. Continue reading...