Amazon, exploiters

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One survey of Amazon facilities showed that74% of Amazon workers skip going to the bathroom to avoid having their pay cut, and over 80% said they would never apply for another Amazon job again.

I once worked for an American company doing contract document copying .  The hours of work were 6 a.m to 6 p.m , with half an hour for lunch.  You had to get permission from the supervisor to go to the toilet and were docked pay if you were away from the machine for more than five minutes.  This was as close to slave labour as I ever got, but it had a good side – when I eventually ran my own company the workers were treated as human beings.

Yes, I admit to using Amazon.  I sent a book to a member of my family and it reached her almost exactly 24 hours later.  Regrettably, you can’t beat that (even if the speed, in this instance, was unnecessary).  But I am increasingly regarding using Amazon as a moral issue.

Obesity

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Excess weight causes about 1,900 more cases of bowel cancer than smoking in the UK each year. There are also 1,400 more cases of kidney cancer caused by excess weight than by smoking each year, 460 more ovarian cancers and 180 more cases of liver cancer. Meanwhile, the overall smoking rate has declined to 14.7%, down from 19% in 2011. But across the UK, obese people outnumber smokers by two to one.  26% of adults were classified as obese in 2016, while 40% of men and 30% of women were overweight.

Those with the highest levels of obesity are risking serious illnesses and premature death at a rate 50% higher than those with a healthy weight, according to a recent study of 2.8 million people. This includes 12 times the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, 22 times the risk of sleep apnoea and nearly four times the risk of heart failure. Even the least obese, with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 to 35, have twice the risk of high blood pressure, nearly twice the risk of heart failure and nearly six times the risk of sleep apnoea. (Cancer Research UK and Alison Rouke, The Guardian, 28 April 2019)

Sorry about all these statistics, but they matter, because this issue is not taken seriously.

I am aware that this  is a contentious issue (on this blog, aside from anywhere else).  Some people think it is a private matter – if people knowingly over-eat and get fat, that is their affair.  Other people have a genetic propensity to obesity they cannot help.

Nonetheless,  obesity is costing the British National Health huge sums, not just in terms of treatment, but in ancillary things like special handling equipment, ambulances, reinforced hospital beds etc.  Those who eat well and exercise are paying towards the treatment of the obese.  The  huge and mounting cost is giving the Tory government an additional excuse for subcontracting  healthcare in England, mostly to for-profit American companies.

Ambassador Darroch’s unresolved resignation

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The shoddy, shabby treatment of the. British Ambassador to Washington raises the immediate question: who leaked his very accurate assessment of Trump?

My favourite explanation is  that the Foreign Office computer system was hacked by an insider with a view of getting Darroch replaced  – by Nigel Farrage.

Who would want this and why?  Principally, Boris Johnson (an act-alike Trump) who has warned May not to make a new appointment until he is installed as PM.  Farage and his extremist Brexiteers are a serious threat to the Tories.  They got more votes than the Tories in the recent local elections, and when Boris (assuming he is in fact, gulp!, Prime Minister) has to call a general election, the Tories could be wiped out.  The Washington job gets Farage out of the way, panders to the latter’s cocky self- importance, and would have the delighted acceptance of Trump.  Moreover, almost any trade deal with the US would be unpopular with the British people, and Farage, heading the British trade negotiations, could be blamed for proposals to sell off the National Health, put British meat producers out of business and flood the market with what Brits regard as second rate, if not unhealthy, food.

The Tories do little in the way of governing for all the people, but no one can complain about them lacking ruthlessness.  To undermine the job of an experienced ambassador, paid to tell the truth as he sees it, is a new low, and illustrates why Epicurus despised power- seeking politicians and advised us to avoid our involvement in party politics.

 

Three expert comments on fighting the climate crisis: who is right?

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1. Report by The Guardian

A study released last week suggests that planting one trillion trees would be one of the most effective – and cheapest – ways to tackle the climate crisis. As ever, the question is whether mankind can organise itself enough to actually start planting. In view of the surge in Amazonian deforestation under Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil it looks as if time is not on our side.  (The Guardian)

2.  Letter to The Guardian

The Trouble with forests

Tree planting may have “mind-blowing” potential to tackle the climate crisis. However, the climate crisis is only one symptom of our continued destruction of the planet. The climate crisis has barely got going, but we are already in the midst of an extinction crisis that could soon rival that of the Cretaceous, when the dinosaurs became extinct. Today, we are losing species at a mass extinction rate, and at this point it’s nothing to do with climate.

Planting billions of trees will accelerate the extinction crisis, because closed-canopy forest is not the natural state on most continents. During the ice ages, and the intervening interglacials that dissected them, areas that we regard as natural forest today weren’t closed canopy, but instead were savannah or steppe, habitats that also absorb and store a great deal of carbon.

Covering these areas with closed-canopy forest will reduce biodiversity and condemn many species to extinction – species that still survive in the remaining fragments of these habitats, or in the farmland that we have replaced them with. Planting billions of trees may be one way of solving the problem, but will create more. Perhaps we can just produce less carbon in the first place. We have the technology, and we know how to make it work. (Martin Dohrn, Bristol)

3. Letter to The Guardian

Your article reinforces the idea that the only way to get a tree or forest is to plant it. Creating woods in serried ranks of trees in plastic tubes that are often left long after they should be removed (is not the way to go). Planting saplings grown abroad is almost certainly how ash dieback came to Britain.

Any piece of land, anywhere in the world below the treeline, left alone without any human interference or expense, will undergo a natural growth via scrub to a fully mature forest of properly native trees. As it does so, it will be taking lots of CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Whether the new forest is planted or natural, when it is mature it no longer has any good effect on CO2 levels: the rotting dead leaves and fallen trees release exactly the same amount of CO2 as the trees take in by photosynthesis.   To make a mature forest a contributor to CO2 reduction you need to cut down the mature trees and use the wood for building (or burn it to replace fossil fuels). Then let the felled forest regrow.( Dr David Corke, director, Organic Countryside CIC).

So the message seems to be “cut down what we already have and let nature take its course?”  But this takes time. Do we have it?

 

 

Not so nice

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With a personal fortune worth just shy of $20 billion, Susanne Klatten ranks as Germany’s richest woman. She and her billionaire younger brother Stefan own a huge stake in BMW and a host of other enterprises.

But Klatten these days is feeling annoyed. She doesn’t feel her family is getting the appropriate respect. As the 57-year-old last month told a business journal: “Many believe that we are permanently sitting around on a yacht in the Mediterranean.” Having to be “a guardian of wealth,” Klatten continued, “has personal sides that aren’t so nice.”

Also not so nice: How Klatten’s family became fabulously rich in the first place. The family patriarch, Günther Quandt, ingratiated himself to Adolf Hitler early on and became one of Nazi Germany’s biggest armament tycoons, rising in 1939 to the status of “war economy führer.” Quandt’s battery plant would even have its own concentration camp, supplying slave labor. The Quandt family never publicly acknowledged any of this sordid history until after a  2007 documentary on the Quandts ran on German television. Not nice at all.  (Inequality.org)

Inequality.org write regular short mini biographies of the very rich.  This typifies the “poor little rich girl” attitude of some.  When interviewed she complains about lack of respect.  For what, exactly?  The respect would be emerge were she to be seen to be making amends to the world for Günther Quandt‘s complicity in the grim crimes of Nazism, at the very least giving generously to the poor and to charity generally.  Most of us would put up with aspects of wealth that “aren’t so nice” for such a nest- egg.  But one of the things that is general and fairly predictable is that so many of the super-rich actually feel sorry for themselves, or pretend thus to feel.

As a follower of the thoughts of Epicurus I would like to think I would continue to live comfortably, yes, but give away the majority of such a huge fortune that neither I nor any of my descendants could possibly spend.  But then – would I? Easy to be holier than her, but in possession of $20 billion……….?