Monthly Archives: December 2022

Revealed: UK’s most secretive think tanks took £14.3m from mystery donors

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openDemocracy has relaunched the Who Funds You? campaign into think tanks and transparency. Here’s what we found

Anita Mureithi

17 November 2022, 10.46am

Original article republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Image of loads of money

The UK’s most secretive think tanks have raised more than £14m from mystery donors in the past two years, new analysis by openDemocracy has found.

Among them are some of the most influential groups in UK politics. Think tanks often boast that they have driven changes to the law and economic policy, such as the tax cuts announced by Liz Truss that are blamed for tanking the UK economy earlier this year.

We have rebooted the formerly volunteer-run Who Funds You? campaign, which uses think tanks’ own income disclosures to position them on a funding transparency scale. The project originally ran for seven years before coming to an end in 2019.

Our analysis assigned a third of think tanks – nine out of 28 – an ‘E’ rating, the worst possible score. These organisations had a total income of at least £14.3m according to their most recent corporate filings, yet we found no, or negligible, relevant information made public about where most of this money comes from.

These notoriously ‘dark money’-funded organisations claim to have influence with the government – and often employ high-profile politicians.

Clifford Singer, the former director of Who Funds You?, said: “I’m so pleased that Who Funds You? is being relaunched on its tenth anniversary, and I can’t think of a better organisation than openDemocracy to take it forward.

“openDemocracy has consistently shone a light on the world of dark money and politics, and Who Funds You? is a perfect complement to openDemocracy’s excellent investigative work.”

Six of the least transparent think tanks – the Adam Smith Institute, the Centre for Policy Studies, Civitas, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Policy Exchange and the TaxPayers’ Alliance – also received an ‘E’ rating in 2019, meaning they have not made any significant improvements.

The three other think tanks that received the lowest transparency rating this year are the Centre for Social Justice, the Legatum Institute and ResPublica, all of which scored higher in 2019.

Singer told openDemocracy that it is “disappointing” to see think tanks lapse in their commitment to transparency.

“I’m sure the relaunch of Who Funds You? will prompt more improvements in transparency, while spotlighting those who remain intent on influencing public policy without declaring who funds them,” he said.

There is no legal requirement for think tanks to reveal their funders, but this lack of transparency is a major concern, say campaigners, especially for institutions that seek to affect government policy.

“Think tanks can play an important role informing policy in Westminster, yet opacity about their funding can raise suspicion that they’re peddling positions in favour of vested interests,” said Steve Goodrich, head of research and investigations at Transparency International UK.

At the other end of the spectrum, think tanks rated ‘A’ are highly transparent, naming all funders who gave them £5,000 or more in the past year and declaring the amounts given.

Ten think tanks (just over a third) received an ‘A’ rating, including the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the New Economics Foundation. The 2019 audit gave nine institutions an ‘A’ rating, including these two.

Polly Curtis, the chief executive of cross-party think tank Demos, which went from a ‘B’ to an ‘A’ this year, said: “Think tanks are an essential part of the democratic fabric of the UK… The values of openness and transparency are core to what Demos stands for, and I’m therefore delighted that our transparency rating has increased since the last audit.”

Less transparent

We found that four think tanks scored lower for transparency this year than in 2019. Among them is the Legatum Institute, a right-wing free-market advocate that has been described as the “Brexiteers’ favourite think tank”.

The Legatum Institute, the fourth largest think tank in our audit, dropped from a ‘C’ rating to an ‘E’. Think tanks are rated ‘C’ if they name at least 50% of funders who gave them £5,000 or more in the last reported year and group funders into specific bands by the amount given.

Despite its influential position, the Legatum Institute, which had an income of £4,175,671 in 2021, has provided no or very little clear information on its website about where donations come from.

But an investigation by openDemocracy in June found that the US fundraising arm of the institute, along with the US arm of the Adam Smith Institute, had between them received $350,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation. Led by a billionaire heir to an oil and banking fortune, the foundation has contributed millions to climate-sceptic organisations in the past decade.

Speaking to openDemocracy, journalist and campaigner George Monbiot said: “For many years, certain think tanks have populated the media, played a decisive role in our politics and changed the life of this nation. Yet we lack the crucial information required to see who they really are: namely, who funds them.”

Policy Exchange, for example, one of the UK’s most prominent conservative think tanks, doesn’t provide any clear information about the funders behind its income of £3,396,554 in 2021. Earlier this year, we revealed that the controversial anti-protest law targeting environmental activists, the UK’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, had been dreamed up by Policy Exchange – a think tank that had previously received $30,000 from US oil giant ExxonMobil.

A number of think tanks in the Who Funds You? audit have all steadily increased their influence at the heart of government over the past decade.

The Adam Smith Institute, IEA, Policy Exchange, the Legatum Institute and the TaxPayers’ Alliance have secured more than 100 meetings with ministers since 2012. All received ‘E’ ratings for transparency this year, and four did in the previous audit.

“Given the proximity of some of these organisations to those in high office, the public really should know who is backing them, for what and with how much money,” Goodrich from Transparency International UK told openDemocracy.

He added that think tanks failing to disclose clear information about their funding “gives the impression that they’ve got something to hide”.

Explore the 2022 data and download the full report at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/who-funds-you/

Original article republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/uk/

Continue ReadingRevealed: UK’s most secretive think tanks took £14.3m from mystery donors

Children born today will see literally thousands of animals disappear in their lifetime, as global food webs collapse

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Frida Lannerstrom/Unsplash, CC BY

Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Flinders University and Giovanni Strona, University of Helsinki

Climate change is one of the main drivers of species loss globally. We know more plants and animals will die as heatwaves, bushfires, droughts and other natural disasters worsen.

But to date, science has vastly underestimated the true toll climate change and habitat destruction will have on biodiversity. That’s because it has largely neglected to consider the extent of “co-extinctions”: when species go extinct because other species on which they depend die out.

Our new research shows 10% of land animals could disappear from particular geographic areas by 2050, and almost 30% by 2100. This is more than double previous predictions. It means children born today who live to their 70s will witness literally thousands of animals disappear in their lifetime, from lizards and frogs to iconic mammals such as elephants and koalas.

But if we manage to dramatically reduce carbon emissions globally, we could save thousands of species from local extinction this century alone.

Ravages of drought will only worsen in coming decades.
CJA Bradshaw

An extinction crisis unfolding

Every species depends on others in some way. So when a species dies out, the repercussions can ripple through an ecosystem.

For example, consider what happens when a species goes extinct due to a disturbance such as habitat loss. This is known as a “primary” extinction. It can then mean a predator loses its prey, a parasite loses its host or a flowering plant loses its pollinators.

A real-life example of a co-extinction that could occur soon is the potential loss of the critically endangered mountain pygmy possum (Burramys parvus) in Australia. Drought, habitat loss, and other pressures have caused the rapid decline of its primary prey, the bogong moth (Agrotis infusa).

All species are connected in food webs. The spider shown here is an elongated St. Andrews cross spider Argiope protensa from Calperum Reserve, South Australia.
CJA Bradshaw

Research suggests co-extinction was a main driver of past extinctions, including the five previous mass extinction events going back many hundreds of millions of years.

But until now, scientists have not been able to interconnect species at a global scale to estimate how many co-extinctions will occur under projected climate and land-use change. Our research aimed to close that information gap.

The unprecedented bushfires of 2019/2020 on Kangaroo Island killed thousands of individuals in many different wildlife populations.
CJA Bradshaw

The fate of wildlife

Using one of Europe’s fastest supercomputers, we built a massive virtual Earth of interconnected food-web networks. We then applied scenarios of projected climate change and land-use degradation such as deforestation, to predict biodiversity loss across the planet.

Our virtual Earths included more than 15,000 food webs that we used to predict the interconnected fate of species to the end of the 21st Century.

Our models applied three scenarios of projected climate change based on future pathways of global carbon emissions. This includes the high-emissions, business-as-usual scenario that predicts a mean global temperature increase of 2.4℃ by 2050, and 4.4℃ by 2100.

If this scenario becomes reality, ecosystems on land worldwide will lose 10% of current animal diversity by 2050, on average. The figure rises to 27% by 2100.

Adding co-extinctions into the mix causes a 34% higher loss of biodiversity overall than just considering primary extinctions. This is why previous predictions have been too optimistic.

Worse still is the fate of the most vulnerable species in those networks. For species highest in food chains (omnivores and carnivores), the loss of biodiversity due to co-extinctions is a whopping 184% higher than that due to primary extinctions.

Without enough prey, predators like this African lion, will perish.
CJA Bradshaw

We also predict that the greatest relative biodiversity losses will occur in areas with the highest number of species already – a case of the rich losing their riches the fastest.

These are mainly in areas recognised as “biodiversity hotspots” — 36 highly threatened areas of the Earth containing the most unique species, such as Southwest Australia and South Africa’s Cape Floristic region. This is because the erosion of species-rich food webs makes biological communities more susceptible to future shocks.

Tropical forest is the main ecosystem found in many biodiversity hotspots worldwide.

We also detected that these networks of interacting species themselves will change. We used a measure of “connectance”, which refers to the density of network connections. Higher connectance generally means the species in a food web have more links to others, thereby making the entire network more resilient.

Connectance, we learnt, will decline between 18% and 34% by the end of this century in the worst-case climate scenario.

This reduction in connectance was also driven by the loss of some key species occupying the most important positions in their local networks. These could be top predators such as wolves or lions keeping plant eaters in check, or an abundant insect eaten by many different insectivores.

When such highly connected species go extinct, it makes the network even less resilient to disturbance, thereby driving even more loss of species than would otherwise have occurred under a natural ecological regime. This phenomenon illustrates the unprecedented challenges biodiversity faces today.

Adieu, koala?
CJA Bradshaw

Can we minimise the threat?

As the United Nations Biodiversity Conference winds up this week in Montreal, Canada, governments are trying to agree on a new set of global actions to halt and reverse nature loss.

It follows the recent COP27 climate change summit in Egypt, where the resulting agreement was inadequate to deal with the global climate crisis.

We hope our findings will, in future, help governments identify which policies will lead to fewer extinctions.

For example, if we manage to achieve a lower carbon-emissions pathway that limits global warming to less than 3℃ by the end of this century, we could limit biodiversity loss to “only” 13%. This would translate into saving thousands of species from disappearing.

Clearly, humanity has so far underestimated its true impacts on the diversity of life on Earth. Without major changes, we stand to lose much of what sustains our planet.The Conversation

Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Models Theme Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University and Giovanni Strona, Doctoral program supervisor, University of Helsinki

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Continue ReadingChildren born today will see literally thousands of animals disappear in their lifetime, as global food webs collapse

Just Stop Oil activists who could be facing prison

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Just Stop Oil activists Louise and Rose both spoke to ITV News’ Here’s the Story as they await trial after being arrested following Just Stop Oil demonstrations.

They told us their views on the possibility of a prison sentence, their thoughts about the new public order bill and how their own actions could have an impact on their futures.

Continue ReadingJust Stop Oil activists who could be facing prison

Tories’ ‘despicable attack’ on striking ambulance workers fails to dent national action

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/tories-despicable-attack-striking-ambulance-workers-fails-dent-national-action

Image of Accident and emergency

HEALTH Secretary Steve Barclay was accused of launching a despicable attack on striking ambulance workers today after he claimed that they have made a “conscious choice to inflict harm” on patients.

Mr Barclay’s inflammatory attack caused fury among union leaders, who accused ministers of causing a year-round mounting death toll of patients through NHS underfunding, understaffing and government failures.

Figures released today shows a 133 per cent increase this year in patients dying while waiting in ambulances to be transferred into hospital, with the reasons for the delays including overflowing A&E departments, lack of beds and staffing shortages.

The number of deaths increased from 40 to 93 and the number of patients who suffered “severe harm” due to delays tripled from 51 patients to 154 in a year.

The figures, obtained by the GMB union using freedom of Information regulations, compared the years 2020-21 with 2021-22 and added to the anger provoked by Mr Barclay’s accusation.

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Continue ReadingTories’ ‘despicable attack’ on striking ambulance workers fails to dent national action

Posties like me are working ourselves to death. Enough is enough

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OPINION: I’ve been a Royal Mail worker for 30 years. Here’s why I’m going on strike

Original article republished from Open Democracy under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Anonymous .

21 December 2022, 6.00am

Image of post office van next to postbox

On National Postal Workers Day 2022, a Royal Mail worker of more than 30 years’ service reflects on what 115,000 of his striking colleagues are fighting for – fair conditions, decent pay, dignity in the workplace and community spirit.

I’ve worked for the Royal Mail for more than three decades, and I can remember thousands of special moments.

You’re working with a special type of person, I’ve come to believe. My colleagues are people willing to go the extra mile. They’re funny and kind, thoughtful and creative. They know that the role they play – and the bond they have with the communities they serve – is unique. I couldn’t count the number of charity runs, fundraising concerts and special events that have been organised by my colleagues.

I remember the wartime stories the older boys could tell when I first started; more recently, I can remember the sacrifices we all made during the pandemic, when many of us died keeping the country connected.

Such proud moments can be reeled off by heart, but so can our problems. During festive periods, we are under serious pressure – but other types of stress are creating an incoming catastrophe. Under-recruitment has meant older workers do more while the next generation isn’t coming through to replenish the ranks, at least not where it matters.

Anecdotally, it’s not uncommon to hear of posties having heart attacks, sometimes fatal, on the job – the price of cutting corners. Ask any postal worker and they can tell you stories about ridiculously outdated toilet facilities, broken doors and seatbelts on delivery vans, and serious complaints getting ignored by managers who seem to think they know better.

Bosses and shareholders come first

The money is there to change all this, but it’s not going where it’s needed. In the last year, Royal Mail made £758m in profit and was able to hand out £400m to shareholders. Royal Mail CEO Simon Thompson even gave himself an advance bonus of more than £140,000. But when it came to the workers who created that profit – and during a historic cost-of-living crisis – Royal Mail’s leadership pleaded poverty then offered us a pay rise of just 2%.

Through the Communication Workers Union (CWU), we voted by nearly 100% on nearly 80% turnout, twice, to strike. Instead of recognising the anger we almost unanimously felt, bosses announced they would withdraw from all existing legal agreements with the union and make moves that many fear could mean the derecognition of the union.

The CWU was even told by members that managers were threatening to dock pay if strikers called in sick. Bosses have been trying to humiliate us online, and have offered bonuses worth up to £30,000 to managers overseeing job cuts. After one strike day, the company said it was going to cut 10,000 jobs unless we packed it in.

Postal workers believe that, for Royal Mail bosses, the wrecking of your Christmas and my wellbeing is a worthwhile sacrifice to turn the company into a bog-standard, Uber-style delivery courier. There, old-fashioned things such as good conditions, decent pay and self-respect on the job can be easily binned, and casualised workers can work harder for less.

This country deserves better, as does its posties

These bosses aren’t people with roots in the industry, and they aren’t sympathetic to the connection it has to our communities: there’s no profit to be made in knocking on your nana’s door when it’s icy, to check on her.

I do my job because I love it. There are things that money can’t buy – like the laughs we gave kids and elderly people with the (frankly bizarre) costumes we tried on during the dark days of the pandemic – and knowing that you serve a wider community and play a useful role in people’s lives.

This is also why we’re on strike. In this country, a tiny number of well-connected people have been making astonishing wealth out of royally stuffing the rest of us for far too long. It feels like everything just gets worse day by day: our bills are sky high, our trains are wrecked, our rivers are filled with sewage, and rent for many is now becoming an existential crisis – and all because a tiny number of people have never had it better.

I, and 115,000 of my colleagues, don’t want to add to these problems by accepting the destruction of one of our few reliable national institutions. This country deserves better, as does its posties. I hope you can back us in our dispute this Christmas. 

Original article republished from Open Democracy under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Continue ReadingPosties like me are working ourselves to death. Enough is enough