At least 1.5 million children are living in poverty because of the Tories’ two-child benefit cap – many of them going hungry – damaging their health, their education and their chances throughout their entire life and leaving them stigmatised and traumatised.
Keir Starmer has previously caused outrage by refusing to commit to ending the cap if Labour gets into government. But this morning on the BBC he went a step further and confirmed that he will not end the cap:
On everything else the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg asked him, Starmer refused to answer one way or the other, using the excuse that he’s ‘not going to write our manifesto here’.
But lifting at least 250,000 kids out of poverty and giving another 1.25 million a massive leg-up to being out of poverty that they are suffering through no fault of their own?
No – on that, Starmer was more than happy to ‘write the manifesto here’, confirming that Labour has no interest in those children or their 400,000 families, most of them working, let alone their relatives who will be equally horrified. Presumably, he thinks poor people don’t vote – or that he doesn’t need them if he can suck up to enough Tories and big business.
A Starmer win means another five years of Tory government, just as much as would a win for the blue version.
KEIR STARMER says that “if we simply patch up and keep going, then we won’t fix the fundamentals and that’s why reform is so important.”
It’s ironic that this line is deployed not to propose far-reaching change, but to reject it.
Starmer has broken so many pledges he must be running out, but he managed to sacrifice another commitment as an offering to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg yesterday, saying Labour will not end the two-child benefit cap.
Anger at Labour’s abstention when the Tories introduced this revolting policy, which punishes innocent children for being born into large families, was a watershed in Jeremy Corbyn’s run for the Labour leadership in 2015.
Seen as a sign that Labour had lost its soul, it infuriated activists and helped mobilise the campaign for a leader who actually cared about ending child poverty and standing up for the vulnerable. Starmer’s latest betrayal should motivate the left to fight again today: campaigns for the policy changes we need must be built from the grassroots, since nobody at Westminster is putting them forward.
A large display from the environmental group Fossil Free London is seen during a climate protest in London on April 24, 2023. (Photo: Mark Kerrison/In Pictures via Getty Images)
“The only ‘danger’ Shell would see in cutting production is to their eye-watering profits,” said one campaigner.
Two days after scientists recorded the hottest day on record and warned that the milestone is the latest clear sign that all fossil fuel production must be urgently phased out, the CEO of multinational oil and gas giant Shell claimed that transitioning to renewable energy sources is what would endanger the world and expressed what campaigners called “cynical” concerns for the well-being of the Global South.
Wael Sawan, who took over the U.K.-based company last year, told the BBC Thursday that the world’s energy system “continues to desperately need oil and gas,” contrary to evidence put forward by the International Energy Agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, and other experts.
“I think what would be dangerous and irresponsible is actually cutting out the oil and gas production so that the cost of living—as we saw just last year—starts to shoot up again,” said Sawan.
Cost-of-living increases have raised alarm in communities around the world following the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—but numerous analyses have pointed to corporate greed and price-gouging, not the decreasing supply of oil and gas, as primary drivers of financial hardship for working people.
Shell reported record-breaking profits of nearly $40 billion last year, doubling its total for 2021.
“The only ‘danger’ Shell would see in cutting production is to their eye-watering profits,” Alice Harrison of the international human rights group Global Witness told The Guardian Thursday. “Whether blinded by the pound signs or simply willfully ignorant, Shell’s CEO is wrong. Ending our dependence on fossil fuels and transitioning to green energy will serve both the planet and provide energy security for all. Shell [has] once again made their loyalties clear—profit over people and planet.”
Guterres is among the critics who have warned that companies that continue to invest in fossil fuels will not continue to see enormous profits forever, and as Common Dreams reported last week, research from the University of Waterloo in Canada found that public pensions in the United States have lost tens of billions of dollars due to their refusal to pull out of the oil, gas, and coal sectors.
“Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness,” Guterres said earlier this year. “Such investments will soon be stranded assets—a blot on the landscape and a blight on investment portfolios.”
In his comments to the BBC, Sawan suggested his concern is not with his own company’s future, but that of the Global South—where people are suffering disproportionately from the effects of the climate crisis and planetary heating, despite causing a tiny fraction of the fossil fuel pollution that originates in wealthier countries.
He said the distribution of benefits from the use of renewable energy must be “globally responsible” so the Global North doesn’t hoard energy sources such as solar and wind power.
“Let’s be clear, companies like Shell are fueling both the climate crisis and the soaring cost of energy,” Jamie Peters of Friends of the EarthtoldThe Guardian. “They are profiting from the misery of ordinary people while destroying the planet, and they’re making a cynical case to continue locking us into the volatile fossil fuel markets that are the root cause of the energy crisis.”
As environmental journalist Harry Cockburn noted on social media, for all Sawan’s claims of concern for people in the Global South, he made clear that Shell’s profits are his top priority as the interview concluded.
Quite amazing interview with Shell boss Wael Sawan here, in which he argues global fossil fuel production must be maintained, or children will be working by candle light, before adding: "Ultimately, I am in the service of shareholder value". https://t.co/JPnI5EgHLM
“Cutting production is only dangerous in the kind of upside-down world where profit rules over everything,” said the grassroots coalition Stop Cambo, which pressured Shell to pull out of the Cambo oil field off the coast of Scotland in 2021. “Even as the planet burns and people are forced to choose between heating and eating.”
‘Without more support too many will continue to rack up unmanageable debts or try and survive in unheated homes causing ill health, misery, and avoidable death.’
Image of cash and pre-payment meter key
…
The National Energy Action (NAE), which works to provide support to those who cannot afford to heat their home, says around 6.6 million households across Britain will be in fuel poverty. The charity warns that despite cost-of-living payments for households on mean-tested benefits, vulnerable families will not receive any government support.
The charity cautions that households who aren’t on qualifying benefits – or aren’t on benefits at all – will miss out. This may include people who are severely in debt, those on low incomes who need to spend more energy at home due their disability or the inefficiency of their homes, unpaid carers, households on low incomes who have seen a drop in their incomes due to a recent bereavement, or households that, until this year, were eligible for wider assistance from programmes like the Warm Home Discount but are now no longer able to access energy rebates.
Adam Scorer, chief executive of the NEA, warns that despite retail prices falling from July, many of the people the charity helps are still struggling. Scorer notes how two-thirds of households across Britain will no longer benefit from any assistance to offset the impacts of the energy crisis and Ofgem’s price cap will offer ‘limited protection to these households.’
“Millions of vulnerable people miss out on cost-of-living payments as they aren’t on the right benefits or no benefits at all. These people need additional help but are being left to manage bills that are still on average over £1,000 per year more expensive compared to the start of the crisis,” said Scorer.
Madrid (AFP) – Climate activists said Sunday they had plugged the holes on 10 golf courses across Spain to protest at the sport’s excessive water usage as Europe lives through a severe drought.
Activists from Extinction Rebellion (XR) filled in the holes under cover of darkness in Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, the Basque Country, Navarra and the Balearic Island of Ibiza to denounce “the waste of water during one of the worst droughts Europe has ever suffered”.
“Golf has no place in a world without water,” said a statement from the group, which uses direct action to underline its warnings about the dangers to the planet.
…
“Just one hole of a golf course consumes more than 100,000 litres of water a day to maintain the surrounding green,” XR said, citing figures from the Spanish NGO Ecologists In Action.
…
Experts say parts of Spain — which is the world’s biggest exporter of olive oil and a key source of Europe’s fruit and vegetables — are the driest they’ve been in a thousand years, with the prolonged drought depleting reservoirs to half their normal capacity.
…
Extinction Rebellion said it was part of a series of international protests “targeting the richest 1 percent of the population” through their golf courses, private jets and high-end cars to make clear that “the rich and their leisure activities that waste essential resources are a luxury we cannot afford”.
…
It should be clear – if you bother to engage your brain – that the climate crisis is already affecting inflation and the cost of living crisis. Less precipitation (rain) and disrupted weather [patterns] through climate change mean less crops and increased prices in the supermarket for your fruit and veg, vegetable and olive oil, all those goods made from wheat, corn, beans, etc. The Capitalists will tell you it’s all because of the war in Ukraine. Bollocks, climate change is adversely affecting crops everywhere, Ukraine is not the only place growing crops. Climate change is affecting everyone now.
It’s also noted that the rich are specifically addressed targeted.
Related: Climate change crisis: Golf courses on borrowed time as Earth’s weather patterns become wilder
