One major sticking point is the EU’s insistence on curbing the UK’s right to support local industries. State intervention may once have been anathema to true Tories, but Covid has “legitimised a more activist state” and the PM is sold on the idea of a new and vigorous industrial policy. He won’t give in easily …
Talking about a literal interpretation of the Constitution as written: the Constitution refers to State militias needing to bear arms, not individuals. It was a matter of States rights and local public defense. The Founders didn’t have in mind allowing every Tom, Dick and Harry to bear arms willy-nilly, endangering harmless citizens. We have departed …
Ürümqi, China The World Uyghur Congress, a group of exiles monitoring the plight of the Muslim minority group in China’s Xinjiang province, has pointed to evidence that Uighur forced labour was used to keep Chinese factory production running at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic earlier this year. Uighurs were packed into blacked-out trains and …
“When state governments consider raising taxes on rich people, rich people in those states like to claim that if their taxes are raised too much, they’ll just pack up and leave for another state with lower taxes. If this were true, states raising taxes on rich people would end up losing tax revenue at the …
Continue reading ‘The myth attached to raising taxes on the super-rich’ »
The top 1% of Americans have taken $50 trillion from the bottom 90%. This has been done by way of unemployment, scant benefits, unfair tax laws, and lopsided investment and political give-aways of our money. Now, the RAND Center has put a number on just how much wealth the top 1 percent has stolen from …
Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, UK Far-right activists have been filming themselves storming hotels that are being used by the Home Office to accommodate asylum seekers, confronting residents in their rooms, and demanding to know which countries they are from. In a series of videos posted on social media, activists with the group Britain First can be seen …
Continue reading ‘Race hatred is not at all confined to the US’ »
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (Cares) Act, the 2 trillion dollar bill passed last March, granted forgivable loans to “qualifying businesses and non- profits”. The Small Business Administration, which administered part of the Act, declared ( but tried to keep it quiet) that houses of worship and religious private schools qualified under the …
Why on earth is Boris Johnson illegally revoking the EU withdrawal treaty which he himself so enthusiastically signed, claiming it gave Britain an “oven-ready” Brexit? Polly Toynbee’s theory is that he is trying to shift the blame for the pain that would follow crashing out of the EU without a deal – on top of …
“Thousands of demonstrators – many of them carrying placards proclaiming Covid-19 to be a “hoax” or a “scam” – recently gathered in Trafalgar Square in London to protest against lockdown restrictions. Among the speakers was Piers Corbyn, the older brother of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was fined £10,000 for his part in organising …
“Are Republican leaders really willing to throw in their lot with demented conspiracy theorists? “The answer, for the moment, would seem to be yes. President Trump tacitly endorsed the far-right QAnon cult the other day, saying its followers were patriots who “love our country” and, more importantly, “like me very much”. When a reporter pointed …
Britain has the least happy teenagers in Europe, at least that’s what a new survey by The Children’s Society tells us. Why might this be? The charity’s chief executive, Mark Russell, believes he knows the reason. It’s down to “the increase in child poverty”, he says. There are two big problems with this explanation. The …
Continue reading ‘Addendum to yesterday’s post: Unhappy teenagers’ »
For five years now, Germany has been in talks with Namibia about making reparation for the mass murder by German troops of some 80,000 Namibians between 1904 and 1908, when the territory was under German colonial rule. Berlin has offered €10m in reparation, but descendants of the few survivors are seeking $4bn. Namibia’s president, Hage …
British government ministers speak frequently about ”it” and how they are striving to bring “it” back. But survey by Britain Thinks found that only 12% of people want to live their lives “exactly as ‘it’ was before” the advent of Covid 19. Only 6% of Britons want the same type of economy as they had …
By the end of the century, polar bears will have largely disappeared from the Arctic, a study published in Nature suggests. The authors examined the possible impact on the bears of two climate change scenarios: a “business-as-usual” one, in which greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at their present rate; and a second in which …
A total of 50.8 million people around the world were recorded as internally displaced in 2019, forced from their homes by conflict and disaster. This is the highest number ever, and 10 million more than in 2018. The figures come from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) in Norway. The most displacements were recorded in …
Continue reading ‘The chaos and displacement started before the virus appeared’ »
In the “good old days” the British neighborhood policeman was not just a law enforcer; he was also a social worker and man-of- all-work, known to all locally, even by name. If your grannie with alzheimer’s disappeared and couldn’t find her way home, it was the local Bobby who would find her and escort …
Jim Tankersley wrote an article for Patriotic Millionaires which encourages us to rethink the traditional narrative of the post World War II economic boom in the US – the idea that innovation and American exceptionalism drove our expansion – is incorrect. Instead, he argues that massive investments into our own citizens was the biggest factor …
To The Economist Limiting temperature rises to 2°C above pre-industrial norms would still leave atmospheric carbon dioxide at well over 450 parts per million (ppm). We evolved – and until less than a century ago, lived – on a 300ppm planet. We need to return the Earth’s climate to its pre-industrial state, without doing the …
Verkhoyansk, Russia The highest temperature ever seen in the Arctic circle – 38°C – has been recorded in a town in Siberia. Scientists had previously predicted that the Arctic circle would not experience temperatures like that until 2100. A small town with a population of 1,000, some 3,000 miles east of Moscow, Verkhoyansk is known …
Continue reading ‘Meanwhile, the world temperatures are rising…….’ »
Not long ago we fondly believed that one thing all nations would have in common was access to the same digital technology, that is (mainly) the internet. We were wrong. Ever since Beijing began building its Great Firewall in 1996, its censored version of the web has diverged from the one used by the rest …
The Black Lives Matter protest movement shows again why America needs to defund bloated and militarized police departments. The brutal videotaped killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, has pushed Americans to the limit of what they will tolerate from police. While many of the problems can be laid at the feet …
Continue reading ‘Police violence Is enabled by massive spending’ »
Care England, Britain’s largest representative body for care homes, reckons that by the end of April 7,500 residents may have died of the virus. But only those who die in hospital after testing positive are included in the statistics. Elderly sufferers, unseen, disregarded, have gone uncounted. Average life expectancy in nursing homes is only two years anyway, …
Continue reading ‘A moral catastrophe: not just in the United States’ »
“The UK’s new start – let’s get going.” That’s the lame slogan unveiled this week to exhort businesses to prepare for Brexit proper in January. For UK consumers, that “sunny” new start means sky-high phone roaming charges, comprehensive travel insurance to cross the Channel, and the need to visit a vet four months in …
Bet you didn’t know! The Anti Defamation League (ADL), a self-proclaimed Jewish civil rights group, is the largest non-governmental trainer of police in this country, facilitating an exchange of the worst practices between U.S. police, ICE and FBI, and the Israeli police and military. This is kept rather quiet, for obvious reasons. The US government gives billions …
”In two blows to church-state separation, Justices Breyer and Kagan joined the conservative majority on the Supreme Court in granting even more preferential treatment to religious bodies. In one case, the court gave the green light to religious employers to apply the “ministerial exemption” to pretty much any employee; a teacher is a coach is …
