NOT SO NICE

There can be few more inappropriate acronyms than the government's creation NICE. "Thousands of people face sight loss after treatment was deemed too expensive. Two drugs proven to be effective in treating eyesight conditions were rejected by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence." (Times, 19 June) RD

Food Aid Fails

From Time magazine , how the feel good factor in charity does very little to ameliorate famine .

Food aid feels good. Last year United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) coordinated emergency food aid for 73 million people worldwide, with the U.S. contributing 60% of that total.

"There's no question that food aid saves millions of lives,"

YET

"...we're concerned that it's being asked to do too much, too inefficiently, and that by over-relying on food aid we ignore other solutions that could be more effective."

A January report by the U.N.'s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) put the question bluntly: Can food aid do more harm than good?


One-third of food-aid budgets never reaches the intended recipients and is instead swallowed up by costs in donor countries, according to the OECD. Only 15% of donated food is sourced locally . When food finally arrives — often too late to feed those most vulnerable — the influx of foreign products wreak havoc on the local market, depressing prices just when farmers need income to feed themselves.
Almost all U.S. food aid, by law, must be grown and processed at home. U.S. agribusiness, which receives subsidies for growing such crops, and the U.S. shipping industry profit from the arrangement. In April, the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a scathing report on how America underachieves in its attempts to feed the world, noting that the amount of U.S. food aid actually reaching beneficiaries has declined by 43% over the last five years because of escalating transport and administrative costs.

Even though plentiful grains may be harvested just over the mountain from famine-stricken areas the first instinct of most governments is still to send bags of grain rather than pursuing longer-term solutions like building roads linking local farming communities with drought-suffering regions. Ethiopia, for example, is one of the largest corn growers in Africa, but poor transportation networks prevent most farmers from selling their crops outside their villages.

"It's all well and good for the American public to feel good about their corn feeding starving people," says Edward Clay, senior research associate with the Overseas Development Institute, a London-based think tank. "But do American taxpayers realize that their money is being used to fund a hugely inefficient enterprise?"

Save the Chidren Poverty Report

Yet again Socialist Courier posts a reminder that Capitalism fails to provide for all members of society for no more reason than that they are born into the wrong class .

Much to the chagrin of the government Save the Children said on Tuesday that one in ten children in Britain are living in "severe poverty" in families surviving on an average income of £7,000 a year .

Using a new measure that combines household incomes with adult and child deprivation, the charity calculated that 10.2 % of children -- or 1.3 million -- were living in what it called "severe poverty."

In the report, Save the Children said conditions were worst in London where severe poverty affected one in six families, living on incomes well below the national average of £19,000 a year.
It said 84% of families in severe poverty could not make regular savings of £10 or more a month. Three-quarters cannot afford to replace worn out furniture.

"It is an outrage that in such a wealthy country, parents are struggling to get by on such low incomes and children are missing out on basic things like living in a warm house, having a proper diet or going on a school trip," the charity said.

CAPITALISM DISTORTS SCIENCE

Two separate items from the same day's newspaper illustrate the harshness of capitalism. "Several men were arrested in an organ-smuggling inquiry in Jordan for allegedly luring poor people to sell their kidneys. More than 80 cases have been uncovered in recent months. Each kidney can sell for up to $2,000 (£1,000)." (Times, 5 June)
"Clinical trials that compare two similar drugs are significantly more likely to favour the one made by the company that pays for the work, according to a study that sheds new light on bias in medical research. ...The work, by a team led by Lisa Bero, Professor of Clinical Pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco, raises fresh concern about the influence of pharmaceutical companies over research." (Times, 5 June) RD

Freedom Is Jail

Just to reinforce the previous blog's comment that capitalism distorts all relationships a report comes out of Europe that finds many women in Scotland are choosing to go into prison - and stay there longer - because their lives on the outside are so chaotic .

In some cases, the problems faced by women on the outside were so enormous they considered prison as a refuge.

"There is evidence that some of these women are choosing to go to prison," said Dr Shewan of Glasgow Caledonian University .

It indicates some women choose to go to prison to escape abusive partners; others to try to stabilise spiralling debts and drug addiction. Also reveals that women had committed crimes (including fire-raising) within prison so as to actually avoid release .

Scotland has one of the fastest-growing female prisoner populations in Europe, despite repeated promises from ministers to reduce the problem. In the past decade, it has more than doubled. Last year, it peaked, with 365 women behind bars. On the same day in 2002, there were 273 women in jail.

The study suggests that sentencers sometimes send women to prison to receive help not available in the community.

Community services are so unable to meet the basic needs of women offenders with drug problems, and so many other problems, that incarceration becomes an easier option, according to the report.

"Could this be one of the underlying reasons why the female prison population in Scotland has been (increasing), and continues to increase?"

In his latest report on Cornton Vale, Scotland's only women's prison, Dr Andrew McClellan, the chief inspector of prisons, concluded that, of the inmates, 98% had drug addiction problems, 80% had mental health problems and 75% had a history of abuse and very poor physical health.

Mental health and addiction problems characterise these women, and many experts claim the experience of prison is likely to increase their drug-taking and offending. Many of them are still being imprisoned for minor offences. Seven out of 10 prison sentences passed on women are for six months or less. In 2004-5, more than 400 women were sent to prison for failing to pay a fine.

"We are locking up increasing numbers of increasingly damaged women," Dr McLellan said "It is desperately sad. You see it not just in their eyes but on their arms, which are deeply scarred from a long history of self-harming."

HAPPY FAMILIES?

Capitalism distorts every human relationship. Even the tightly knit family unit, which you would imagine to be a bulwark against the ravages of capitalism, is not immune. A two year study conducted by the National Centre for Social Research and King's College, London has come up with some horrendous statistics. "Elderly people must have the same legal safeguards as children, experts said yesterday after research found that 350,000 pensioners were abused in their own homes by carers last year. ...However there was also widespread evidence of theft, fraud and misuse of power of attorney by other family members." (Times, 15 June) RD

The Dumbing Down of Doctors

In a previous post Socialist Courier high-lighted how the Romanian health service was reducing costs by dispensing with cancer specialists . Couldn't possibly happen here many readers may have said .

But we now read a government plan to cut senior staff in paediatric wards and neonatal units and replace them with trainee doctors will put infants at risk, doctors and patient groups have warned.

At the moment most paediatric wards have up to seven specialist paediatric senior house officers (SHOs) - doctors with up to four years' experience. Most could be replaced under Modernising Medical Careers. In future, trainee doctors with one or two years' experience will spend four months in paediatrics before moving on to another specialism, and would not necessarily have any interest in that area of medicine.
45,000 babies are born prematurely each year. Babies born at 23 weeks have a 17 per cent chance of survival and require expert medical support, while half of all babies born before 30 weeks suffer from apnea, which causes them to stop breathing.

Senior medical staff warned yesterday that inexperienced trainees are unsuited to difficult procedures such as putting an intravenous drip line into a baby's arm or treating vulnerable premature babies.

A senior London doctor said the impact on the care of vulnerable young children and premature babies could be disastrous. "Paediatrics is a specialism and, to be safe, people must be trained," the doctor said. "If things go wrong during pregnancy, you would call to the delivery an Senior House Officer who would deal with any complications. There is a big difference in a critical situation between an SHO and a trainee. These changes could result in the death of a baby or brain damage... "

Remedy UK , a 13,000-strong doctors' campaign group , accused the Department of Health of "dumbing down" doctors with MMC. "It used to take 21,000 hours of training to become a consultant but this has been reduced to 6,000. There is a move towards dumbing down the system rather than aiming for excellence," said a spokesman.

And here we read what it now feels like to be a doctor .
"...professionalism is being reduced to being a bit like just being on a production line."

First , capitalism made medicine and health into a business , run by accountants , now capitalism turns it all into a factory .

Hypocrisy

BAE Systems will pay Lord Woolf, the former Chief Justice, up to £468,000 over the next nine months to chair an inquiry into the defence company's business ethics . Lord Woolf said he would be paid £6,000 a day for his work on the inquiry, which is likely to consume two days a week for the next six to nine months.

Well , the Socialist Courier will save BAE time and money .

Ethically , the arms industry are no better than glorified gun-running murderers . A corrupt , immoral business and a bane on civilisation , that is out to get a quick and extremely lucrative profit from war and the fear of war .

Lord Woolf's role is to place a cloak of respectabilty around a killing industry .

BAE has no ethics .

For the scrap heap , hopefully

There is money in scrap , particularly for the directors .

The Aberdeen based scrap metal reprocessor and steel trading firm and one time rag-and -bone company John Lawrie Group announced that they paid an un-named director £2.1 million in 2006, plus a further £300,000 in contributions to his pension scheme. This compares with a combined figure of £1.6 million in 2005.
The increase helped swell total directors' remuneration to £3.9m from £2.6m.

This individual is assumed to be Brian Meldrum the chairman who staged a management buy-out of the company in 1981 which saw him climb the league table of top corporate earners in Scotland.

Another one for the scrap-heap when the revolution comes .

And Moir Lockhead, chief executive of ScotRail operator FirstGroup, saw his remuneration fall just short of the magic £1 million mark in the last financial year. Lockhead received a basic salary of £461,000, a cash bonus of £254,000 and benefits-in-kind of £30,000 in the year to March 31. This totalled £745,000, up from £723,000 in 2006. Lockhead was also awarded a bonus worth £254,000 in deferred shares . His total bonus for 2006-07 is therefore £508,000, or the maximum 110% of salary for the second year running. The deferred bonus, assuming it vests, will take Lockhead's total remuneration for 2006-07 to £999,000. In addition he also received perk benefits comprising of £24,000 in respect of a company car, £5000 for private fuel, and £1000 of medical insurance for Lockhead and his spouse.

GROWING OLD DISGRACEFULLY

The journalist Mary Riddell paints a dire picture of what it is like to be old when you are poor. "Some of the 31,000 pensioners who died of cold-related illnesses in the last five winters would still be alive, but for enforced frugality. ... In its Spotlight survey out this week Help the Aged will present a disturbing picture of worsening old age. According to its findings, 144,000 people never leave their homes, 21 per cent live in poverty and more than one in 10 is chronically lonely, a figure up significantly in the past year; 73 per cent of adults say older people face routine discrimination." (Observer, 10 June) After a lifetime of work and exploitation this is the fate of many workers inside capitalism. RD

Electric shocks

It is good to see that your electric bill went to good cause .

Scottish & Southern Energy , the Perth-based parent company of Scottish Hydro-Electric , has handed its top executives inflation-busting salary increases after a review of boardroom remuneration concluded that they were underpaid .
SSE's four executive directors saw their basic salaries rise by between 9% and 17%.

Chief executive Ian Marchant is now on a basic of £720,000 - an increase of around £100,000 in the past two years. Also proposed to the annual meeting was that the maximum bonus "cap" for executive directors under the company's new performance share plan be increased from 100% to 150% of salary.

Marchant's salary, annual bonus, and benefits jumped by more than 16% to £1.21 million in 2006-07, up from £1.04 million in the prior financial year. As well as his basic salary of £675,000, bonus of £518,000 and benefits of £17,000, Marchant was awarded 46,081 shares under the deferred bonus plan.These shares had a value of nearly £670,000 at last night's closing price . In all , taking his total remuneration for the year to nearly £1.9 million . Marchant also made a notional gain on the exercise of share options of £408,876.

Colin Hood, who joined the board of SSE in January 2001 as power systems director and became chief operating officer in October 2002, was paid salary, bonus and benefits totalling £894,000 in 2006-07, up from £772,000 last time. Hood was awarded 33,446 shares under the deferred bonus plan worth nearly £500,000 at yesterday's closing price

Finance director Gregor Alexander received £656,000 in 2006-07, up from £531,000 last time, including a basic salary of £360,000 and bonus of £282,000.

Alistair Phillips-Davies, the energy supply director, took home £659,000, up from £531,000.

Chairman Sir Robert Smith, meanwhile, saw his pay rise from £218,000 in 2005-06 to £266,000.

Next time you are told you are over-paid , remember what Scottish Hydro consider as under-paid.

meanwhile also reported by The Herald , the new Scottish Media Group chief executive Rob Woodward is set to be handed free shares in the troubled media group potentially worth £2.5million . A revamped long-term incentive plan (LTIP), which will be put to a shareholder vote at an extraordinary meeting on Friday, will see a clutch of executives share 2007 awards with a potential value of £6.8 million. Finance director George Watt, sole survivor of the much-criticised "ancien regime" at SMG, could pocket more than £900,000 when the 2007 LTIPs vest in three years' time.
Rewards not to compensate for being underpaid , but to "incentivise and motivational and retentative " purposes .

This Land is my Land! can you afford the death dues?

Scotland on Sunday June 10th 07, printed an article by Richard Ellas titled TOO POOR TO REST IN PEACE:
Exhumation, when it happens, is news on the television and press in this part of the world. It causes a lot of anguish for families concerned and usually a lot of legal work has taken place before an exhumation takes place. This article which is supported by pictures of council workers transporting corpses in wheel-barrows and rubbish trucks puts another meaning to being thrown on the scrapheap at the end of your working life. One thing for sure, it will not be members of the capitalist class who have to put up with this obscenity.
I quote
“Even in death the poor of Guatemala cannot be certain their bodies will attain eternal rest.
After six years in a tomb relatives have to pay a £12 fee to allow the remains to stay in place for four more years.
If, as is often the case in the poverty- stricken Central American country, relatives cannot afford the fee, council workers dig the body up and dump it down a deep shaft which doubles up as a communal grave.
The main cemetery In Guatemala City, like many others, is so crowded that the authorities have had to impose the tax in order to make room for new bodies.
This year alone, more than 2000 corpses have already been exhumed and deposited down the hole.
Even if the tax has been paid, the death dues are up for renewal four years later.”

For Capitalists it is indeed private property

One of Scotland's richest women has won a landmark legal ruling to ban ramblers from entering the grounds of her Perthshire estate . Ann Gloag is the first private individual in Scotland to exempt her land from right-to-roam legislation.
In his judgment, Sheriff Fletcher said that the "nature of the building and its prominence" meant a larger section of surrounding land was required by Mrs Gloag to ensure her family's privacy and enjoyment of the house.

Stagecoach tycoon, Ann Gloag, who is worth an estimated £395 million , had already angered walkers by erecting a fence around Kinfauns Castle estate. Mrs Gloag was granted retrospective planning permission after erecting a fence around part of her estate.

"This gives a green light to landowners to go around the countryside erecting fences without planning permission." - Dave Morris , Ramblers Association Scotland

Not so good down in the Valleys

A study has found that a higher proportion of family poverty exists in Wales than anywhere else in the UK.
The survey by the University of London found 30% of families in Wales were living below the poverty line. This compared with 25% in England and 21% in Scotland.

"We have studied people throughout their lives before and the imprint of having lived in poverty in childhood can be traced through school and into adult life, so finding such a lot of disadvantage amongst a big minority of today's children is very disturbing," said Professor Heather Joshi, director of London University's Centre of Longitudinal Studies

It confirms an earlier report on Welsh children . The charity Barnardo's has warned that nearly one in three of Welsh children are living in poverty. One worker for the charity said children in Wales occasionally go without food or heating.

BEHIND THE STATISTICS

"One NHS hospital patient in eight still waits more than a year for treatment, figures released by the Department of Health suggest. Data from 208,000 people admitted to hospital in March showed that 48 per cent of patients needing a hospital stay were treated within 18 weeks. But 30 per cent waited more than 30 weeks, and 12.4 per cent more than a year." (Times, 12 June) Behind these dry statistics lies the real human misery of being poor and ill inside capitalism. RD

A King's Ransom

It is indeed the never -ending story . While you struggle to make ends meet and pay those bills and perhaps , just perhaps , indulge in a small luxury or two , the capitalist class goes on awarding themselves inflation breaking pay rises and shameless special share-issue perks .

From The Times

Justin King, chief executive of J Sainsbury, is in line to earn up to £13.6 million in cash and shares in the year ahead after a pay rise and bonus increase . The supermarket’s annual report, published yesterday, revealed that Mr King was paid £1.92 million in the year to March . He has received a 17.2 per cent rise in basic salary to £850,000 and a 41 per cent increase in pension payments to £255,000.

In the year to March 2007, Sainsbury’s set aside shares equivalent to 180 per cent of his salary for Mr King under a long-term incentive plan. In the year to March 2008, the company intends to set aside shares equivalent to 250 per cent of Mr King’s salary. Mr King is already on course for a payout of 1.66 million shares, worth £9.1 million at yesterday’s share price, in May next year.

Darren Shapland, the finance director, is receiving a rise in his basic salary to £500,000 from £450,000 and a share award worth 50% of his salary, up from 35% the year before.

Class and the class-room

By the age of three, children from disadvantaged homes are up to a year behind in their learning than those from more privileged backgrounds.

The Millennium Cohort Study also found large differences between children living in families above and below the poverty line.
The poorest children were 10 months behind their wealthier peers in tests of their grasp of shapes, numbers, letters and colours known as "school readiness" tests. And they were five months behind their wealthier peers in vocabulary tests.

One of the researchers, Professor Heather Joshi, said: "The advantaged children tended to be way ahead of the average and the disadvantaged children were lagging behind. If you look at the front-runners and the runner ups - there's almost a year's worth of differences."

These results will not be a surprise to education experts or government policy advisers [ Nor a surprise to the members of the Socialist Party either ] who have long known that parents' educational achievement and family income are indicators of a child's educational success.

An earlier BBC report describes that little progress has been made to close the achievement gap between rich and poor pupils . Children from poorer homes (eligible for free school meals ) are almost half as likely to get good GCSE results as pupils from richer homes .

The New King of Wall St.

It is never ending , isn't it ? The ostentatious wealth of the capitalist class .

From the Guardian :-

Stephen Schwarzman, enjoyed personal earnings of $398 million last year. When Blackstone goes public, he will receive a windfall of at least $449 million and he will retain a stake in the business worth $7.7 billion.

Schwarzman, founded Blackstone in 1985 with an investment banking colleague, Peter Peterson, who served as US commerce secretary in the Nixon administration.

Mr Peterson, took home $212 million last year and will get $1.88 billion by selling shares at Blackstone's flotation.

A third senior executive, Hamilton James, enjoyed annual income of a $97 million and stands to receive $147 million .

Vice chairman Tomlinson Hill got $45 million last year

Chief financial officer Michael Puglisi received $17 million

Seven more executives will have shares worth a combined $380 million on flotation.

A 60th birthday party hosted by Mr Schwarzman featured private performances by Rod Stewart and Pattie LaBelle, an all male capella group serenading him with "happy birthday" and a troupe of elite cadets from New York's Knickerbocker Greys to lead guests to their seats. The guest list included Donald Trump, mayor Michael Bloomberg and the perfume heir Leonard Lauder.

AN EYE OPENER

"An ex-serviceman is being left to go blind in one eye before the National Health Service will consider treating him for a condition affecting 250,000 people in the UK. Leslie Howard, 76, noticed problems with his right eye in November and was diagnosed with wet age-related macular degeneration two months ago. His sight could be saved by a course of treatment involving new drugs which could cost more than £6,000 a year. .. Mr Howard, who retired 17 years ago, said: "I can't believe I'm being left to go blind in one eye. I've spent most of my working life devoted to public service, I was in the Army, police and prison service and I've never failed to pay my dues." (Daily Telegraph, 25 April) Capitalism has a strange sense of values, it is reluctant to pay £6,000 to save a worker's sight yet spends £40,000 a year keeping murderers like Michael Sams in prison! RD

PRISONERS OF WANT

"Murderer and kidnapper Michael Sams has said he is better off in prison than he would be living as a free pensioner. Sams, 66, was jailed for life in 1993 ... Sams, from Nottinghamshire, wrote to prisoners' magazine Inside Time to oppose a call for convicts' pensions. He said he had better living conditions inside Whitemoor jail, Cambridgeshire, than many people on the basic pension. In his letter, Sams wrote: .. "Materially, we OAPs in prison are far better off than those in the community. .. "Most struggle to keep warm in winter, afraid to put the heating on, barely eating, let alone getting three square, ready-made, meals per day." (BBC News, 18 April) What a society capitalism is! It treats murderers better than old workers. RD