Fact of the day

Scotland wastes an astonishing £1 billion a year throwing away perfectly good food. As much as one-fifth of the food and drink people buy ends up being dumped in the bin, costing the average Scottish household £430 a year – yet most of it could be consumed.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/environment/revealed-how-scots-throw-away-1bn-worth-of-food-each-year.19076921

much the same there

Scotland recently had Martha Payne, who drew attention to the sad state of school dinners in her blog which the shamed local authority tried to ban .

In eastern Germany more than 11,000 schoolchildren were recently affected by gastrointestinal sickness -- most likely because of what they ate at school. Experts now believe that frozen strawberries from China are behind the massive outbreak of the norovirus

Germany has 11 million children attending 45,000 schools, and the number of them being fed at these schools is rising (a third of all 11- to 15-year-olds already go to school without having had breakfast). As a result, the school catering business is becoming highly competitive and growing at an annual rate of 5 percent. Already today, the five largest school catering companies generate combined revenues of some €160 million ($208 million) in the country. By far the largest of these is the French company Sodexo. The self-described specialist in "quality of life services" offers an extremely broad range of services, from nursing care to cleaning to catering. The company's global sales are estimated at €18 billion, and its 391,000 employees make it one of the 25 largest employers in the world. The family of company founder Pierre Bellon is believed to be the richest family in France. The company and its products quickly fell under suspicion of being at least partially responsible for the mass outbreak of illness in eastern Germany because many of the affected establishments were supplied by its industrial kitchens. Sodexo quickly became sector leaders with rock-bottom prices of €1.55 ($2) per meal and many employees working for low wages, according to the NGG union. Today, 65 Sodexo kitchens supply 200,000 daily meals all across Germany.

The fundamental problem remains the lack of willingness to pay enough for good food. Even Horst de Haan, the head of Sodexo operations in Germany, complains of enormous price pressure "The tendering rules call for an agency to accept the cheapest price," he says.

Berlin's Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district decided that they weren't going to pay more than €2.10 for school lunches. And experts like Ulrike Arens-Azevedo,  professor of nutrition at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, explained "one cannot cook healthy food over the long term for such low prices."

Meanwhile, school children in rich cities, such as Konstanz in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, receive subsidized school lunches that cost roughly €4.50 each, use ingredients from the region and are 40 percent organic. In Gera, on the other hand, a city in the eastern state of Thuringia, meals can't cost more than €2.30, and parents are solely responsible for paying for them. Even the catering companies only receive a fraction of the cost of these low-priced meals. In addition to having to pay all of the 19 percent in value-added tax themselves, they are also responsible for energy, transportation and personnel costs. "Maybe 50 cents of the €2 are left to the caterer to pay for the ingredients," says Polster, the head of the DNSV advocacy association. "That already makes one wonder of what kind of quality they are."

Sarah Wiener, a celebrity chef, calls for schools to receive higher food subsidies. "By having meals at such a low culinary level, we cement a taste for industrial food," she says. "We shouldn't put the profit maximization of a sector over the well-being of our children."

much the same here

InIn America real wages for the bottom 80 percent of households have remained relatively stagnant since the late 1970s. People survived these stagnant wages by working more hours, bringing more family members into the paid labor force, and borrowing more, thanks to easy access to credit. This put enormous stresses on many working families as they got caught on a work-consume-borrow treadmill. But for many, this was the only way to attain or maintain a relative decent standard of living. Overwork and debt masked the reality of falling and stagnant wages.

The total amount of credit card debt exploded, thanks in part to aggressive “debt pushing.” In 2006, there were 6 billion credit card solicitations sent out.The majority of home financing was for second mortgages, not new home acquisitions. Access to easy credit was the drug that enabled millions to live beyond their means.  The consumption engine driving the economic boom between 2000 and 2008 was based on borrowing, not real wage increases. When the economy seized up in 2008 and access to easy credit ground to a halt, so did the consumption engine. Millions of people lost their jobs or a significant household income.

Adapted from here
http://www.alternet.org/books/most-us-will-not-have-better-life-unless-we-turn-tables-super-rich?paging=off

food for thought

New data from the United Nations reveals that there has been progress in reducing the number of hungry people worldwide. But an estimate that nearly 870 million people, one in eight, suffered from chronic undernourishment over the last two years. The vast majority of these people, 852 million, live in developing countries, which means that 15 percent of the developing world suffers from hunger, while 16 million people are undernourished in developed countries.

The FAO estimates that childhood malnutrition causes the deaths of more than 2.5 million children every year.

The situation is particularly bad in Africa, where the number of hungry has grown in the last twenty years from 175 to 239 million.

Food is transported all across the world. Even though according to researchers we currently produce food for 11 billion people there exists food shortages and millions starve.  Yet 1.3bn are obese, condemned to artificially cheap, calorie-rich, nutrient-poor processed food. Today's hunger is permanent and global. It is hunger by design. This does not mean that those who design the contemporary   food systems intend to create hunger. It does mean that creation of hunger is built into the capitalist structure of industrial  production and globalised distribution of food for profit. The dominant myth of big agro-buiness is that it produces more food and is land-saving. However, the more industrialised agriculture spreads, the more hungry people we have. And the more commercial agriculture spreads, the more land is grabbed.

"Hunger and malnutrition is manmade. It is in the design of the industrial chemical model of agriculture. And just as hunger has been created by design, producing healthy and nutritious food for all can be designed through food democracy." writes environmental activist Vandana Shiva.

Much of her argument is for ecological and sustainable systems of food production that work with nature and not against and  has value, yet as socialists frequently encounter, when those social scientists deem technology as a root cause they overlook the economic imperative to create profit for a particular class which according to ourselves is the real root cause. Unless this is addressed directly then no amount of campaigning for reform will change the reality producers and consumers face. Food production reformers talk within an economical and  political vacuum with no real attention given to genuine solutions.

ANOTHER MEDIA ILLUSION

One of the illusions that is presented by the media about the working class is that they are lazy, work-shy and always ready to take a day off work if they think they can get away with it, but the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development's recent report seems to prove that this is a media illusion. "Millions of workers are 'too frightened' about losing their job to take time off work when they are sick, even if they are very ill, a report reveals today. The authoritative report says a culture of 'presenteeism' is sweeping Britain as workers decide to come into the office, rather than stay home in bed. A third of bosses have seen an increase in the number of workers 'who struggle into work when unwell' over the last year, according to the report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development." (Daily Mail, 9 October) RD

There's gold in them thar hills...

Scotgold has predicted that jewellery buyers will pay a premium for gold from the firm’s Cononish mine near Tyndrum, where production is set to begin in early 2014. 15 to 20 major Scottish jewellers had shown an interest in the mine, which will be capable of producing around 5,000 ounces of gold a year.

Chairman John Bentley urged Scottish institutional investors to “put their hands in their pockets” and support the project, which will be Scotland’s first commercial gold minehe firm has other prospects in Argyll and Bute, including the River Vein area and Sron Garbh, where it has encountered some “very interesting” signs of platinum, although chief executive Chris Sangster stressed this work was at a very early stage He said: “The level of geological data in Scotland, and probably the rest of the UK, is worse than Burkina Faso, Ghana or Mali. Geophysics for the UK was done in 1955, and we suffer from a lack of fundamental data.”

Fundamentally....

“God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell...There’s a lot of scientific data that I found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I believe that the Earth is about 9,000 years old. I believe that it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.” espoused Congressman Paul Broun, a medical doctor,  from Georgia, who sits on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology responsible for crafting US government policy.

A recent Gallup Poll suggests that 46 percent of Americans think God made humans within the past 10,000 years, while only half the nation believes in evolution.

MONEY TO BURN

Being rich has lots of problems. For instance what do you spend all that loot on? A couple of American fat cats have thought of a couple of ways. "Bob R. Simpson is the co-chairman of the Texas Rangers. He also just spent one million dollars on a penny from the forties. Sounds crazy to us, but what do we know about pennies? Oh yeah! We know that they are usually only worth a penny, which usually equals one cent. So what's the deal, Bob? Also, in an unrelated story, some 15-year-old girl in Texas drove a $300,000 Lamborghini to school. Rich kids will do the darnedest things." (Yahoo News, 21 September) Starving kids? Who cares? Let the kid drive the old banger to school. RD

CAN OF BEANS, ANYONE?

The owning class like to outdo each other in the conspicious consumption of luxuries and to satisfy their needs Electrolux has launched what must be the world's most expensive domestic kitchen. "An arsenal of blast-chillers, sous-vide vacuum packers and ovens powered by computer hard drives, all apparently designed for super-rich MasterChef obsessives, has gone on sale with a lettuce-wilting price tag of £76,000, rising to more than £200,000 if you want the very best ovens. Cupboards, drawers and work surfaces are your own business, adding upwards of £100,000 for the best finishes, say designers. Welcome to the quarter of a million pound kitchen. ... "I am sure some people will buy it only because they believe it's the pinnacle of what is on the market," said Henrik Otto, the designer. "But on the other hand they probably have a private chef who will use it for them. [The market] is people who holiday in the Caribbean, fly there on their private jet and own their own island." (Guardian, 20 September) In a society where millions of people try to exist on on couple of dollars a day billionaires are spending a quarter of a million pounds on a kitchen. That is capitalism in action. RD

Equal Education for All ?

Only seven children from the poorest areas in Edinburgh got grades last year that could place them at St Andrews University or other very competitive courses at Edinburgh and Glasgow. Figures released by the Scottish government under freedom of information legislation also revealed that only 220 of the poorest children within Scotland, who are defined in their background areas via postcode, achieved high grades. Just 2.5 percent of the 8,842 fifth year students from the poorest areas got three or more As in their higher exams. Edinburgh’s state schools are falling behind far more poorer areas in Scotland, as only 1.4 percent of children from its most deprived neighbourhoods are achieving the minimum needed grades for universities or degree courses. As few as 50 got grades good enough to compete for places at Oxford.

Professor Lindsay Paterson, professor of educational policy at Edinburgh university, said "It's not just that Edinburgh's figures are extremely low but that the inequality in Edinburgh is extremely high."

SOME STAGGERING STATISTICS

The basis of capitalism is the working class producing a surplus value over the cost of their wages that allow the owning class to live in ease and luxury. How great that surplus value has become in modern capitalism was recently illustrated by some American statistics. "Just how rich are the Waltons? According to the latest edition of the Forbes 400, released yesterday, the six wealthiest heirs to the Walmart empire are together worth a staggering $115 billion. ..... The average Walmart worker earns just $8.81 an hour. At that wage, the union-backed Making Change at Walmart campaign calculates that a Walmart worker would need 7 million years to earn as much wealth as the Walton family has (presuming the worker doesn't spend anything)" (Mother Jones, 20 September) RD

A FRUIT AND NUT CASE

Capitalism is a social system based on class ownership and sections of the owning class are always in disputes over this ownership. They have legal battles sometimes leading to military battles over the ownership and access to sources of raw materials and markets. Recently there has been a legal dispute over the ownership of a particular colour. "Is chocolate the first thing you think of when you see Pantone 2685C? It might be if I tell you that it is the technical name for Cadbury Daily Milk's distinctive purple. And it does indeed "belong" to Cadbury, after a decision in the High Court yesterday that the confectioner's purple packaging constitutes a trademark." (Times, 2 October) This dispute arose over Cadbury's rival Nestle objection to Cadbury registering the colour as a trademark in 2004. Nestle had already lost in 2008 but decided to appeal the judgement of the Registrar of Trade Marks. Only capitalism with its emphasis on ownership could have highly trained legal minds battling for years over who "owns"a colour. Madness. RD

Fact of the Day

India's health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said 39 million Indians are pushed to poverty because of ill health every year and around 30 per cent in rural India did not go for any treatment due to financial constraints. 60 per of total health expenditure in India was paid by the common man from his own pocket in 2009. The report states that about 47 per cent and 31 per cent of hospital admissions in rural and urban India were financed by loans and sale of assets.

Slaving away in the hospitals

Fears that patient safety may be put in danger by overworked and tired staff were raised today amid warnings that some surgeons and nurses in the Lothians have been working seven days a week solidly for three months. Staff are said to be clocking up 72 hours every week.

Some NHS Lothian staff members – such as surgeons, anaesthetists and  theatre nurses – are being offered extra shifts at evenings and at weekends, as part of the effort to reduce the number of patients waiting longer than the target of 12 weeks for treatment.

NHS Lothian employee director and former vice-chairman Eddie Egan, who raised the issue with the board. He said: “We need to get the waiting list numbers down, but I’m speaking to people working seven days a week and they’ve been doing that for three months in high-pressure environments. I am concerned that staff are being put under pressure. People are feeling  morally obliged to turn up, even if they’re exhausted, because they know patients will be cancelled if they don’t. It’s  potentially putting patients in danger. If you’re working seven days a week, in evenings and are possibly on call, it  reaches a point where you have to query – are people safe?”

 MSP Margo MacDonald said "Think of people with driving jobs who are not allowed to drive for too many hours because they need sleep and rest. If that’s true for drivers it’s certainly true for surgeons and nurses.”

Tom Waterson, Lothian branch chairman for Unison, said  “No-one should be working more than 48 hours in one week,” he said. “The working time directive was not brought in to save money, it was brought in to protect health.”

desperate and in despair

Researchers say a “hidden” population of people refused asylum have been allowed to live on Scottish streets with zero benefits and no right to work in the UK. Hundreds of failed asylum seekers are living in Scotland on less than the UN’s global poverty target of £0.77 ($1.25) a day. Pregnant women, children and people with disabilities are among those who have been left destitute on Scotland’s streets, according to the Scottish Poverty Information Unit. The independent study was commissioned by the British Red Cross, Refugee Survival Trust and the Scottish Refugee Council.

Morag Gillespie of SPIU, said the levels of poverty she found were “dreadful” and that many interviewees were literally penniless with no legitimate means of income. The report states that 1,849 destitute people were given emergency grants from a charity called the Refugee Survival Trust from 2009 to 2012. Almost half (49 per cent) were homeless, including families with children, 26 people with mental health issues, four disabled people and five pregnant women and two new mothers. The asylum seekers came from 67 countries, most often Iran, Iraq and Eritrea. Some interviewees had been in the asylum system for more than a decade.

Gary Christie, of the Scottish Refugee Council, said: "We see people who have been tortured in Iran yet have been refused protection; others fleeing for their lives from the violence of war in Somalia but who don’t meet the terms of the refugee convention or pregnant women whose cases have been turned down and don’t qualify for any support until they reach 32 weeks." He goes on to explain “People are literally being starved into leaving Scotland. People have lost their asylum cases but are left in limbo as there is no way of returning them to their countries. Either the person will not return voluntarily or there is no practical way of achieving the return, as the country won’t accept them back or there is no safe passage to get there. These people are left with no accommodation, no right to work, no benefits and no food. Some people can remain in such a situation for months or years, which is a disgrace.”

The richies of Arabia

 Saudi Arabia has 1,265 wealthy people with a total net worth of $230 billion. The United Arab Emirates ranked second with 810 with a total net worth of $120 billion, followed by Kuwait in the third place with 735 individuals with a total net worth of $125 billion and Qatar in the fourth place has 300 with a total net worth of $45 billion. Syria has 215 people whose total net worth was $23 billion.

 Overall, the total number of the wealthy in the Middle East reached 4,595 people (population of the Arab world over 367 million in 2012) with a total net worth of $710 billion.

The overall number of millionaires around the world has risen to 18,738 with a total net worth of $25.8 trillion.

Against all this wealth there are millions of people living in extreme poverty. On a global level, the World Bank estimates published at the beginning of March 2012 indicate that the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 per capita/day amounted to about 1.29 billion in 2008, which is equivalent to 22 per cent of the population of the developing world. 43 per cent exist on less than $2 a day

As the old sayings by Imam Ali bin Abi Talib, cousin of Prophet Mohammed, says: "The rich are fortunate at the expense of the poor"

Quote of the Day

Ryanair's Michael O'Leary said  that being paid his €1.2m (£1m) pay, 20 times more than his average employee,  is too little, claiming to work "50 times harder".

Fact of the Day

Bill Gates is in possession of $60,000 million. If he sat perfectly still and did nothing, his income at a nominal 5 per cent a year would equate to $3,000 million a year. That’s roughly $8 million a day.

who owns the north pole - part 53

In August, China sent its first ship across the Arctic to Europe and it is lobbying intensely for permanent observer status on the Arctic Council, the loose international body of eight Arctic nations that develops policy for the region, arguing that it is a “near Arctic state” and proclaiming that the Arctic is “the inherited wealth of all humankind,” in the words of China’s State Oceanic Administration. Its scientists have become pillars of multinational Arctic research, and their icebreaker has been used in joint expeditions. In Canada, Chinese firms have acquired interests in two oil companies that could afford them access to Arctic drilling. During a June visit to Iceland, Premier Wen Jiabao of China signed a number of economic agreements, covering areas like geothermal energy and free trade. In Greenland, large Chinese companies are financing the development of mines that are being developed around discoveries of gems or minerals by small prospecting companies, said Soren Meisling, head of the China desk at the Bech Bruun law firm in Copenhagen, which represents many of them. A huge iron ore mine under development near Nuuk, for example, is owned by a British company but financed in part by a Chinese steel maker. Chinese mining companies have even proposed building runways for jumbo jets on the ice in Greenland’s far north to fly out minerals until the ice melts enough for shipping.

High-level Chinese diplomats have visited Greenland, where Chinese companies are investing in a developing mining industry, with proposals to import Chinese work crews for construction. Greenland’s minister for industry and mineral resources was greeted by Vice Premier Li Keqiang in China last November. A few months later, China’s minister of land and resources, Xu Shaoshi, traveled to Greenland to sign cooperation agreements. Western nations have been particularly anxious about Chinese overtures to this poor and sparsely populated island, a self-governing state within the Kingdom of Denmark, because the retreat of its ice cap has unveiled coveted mineral deposits, including rare earth metals that are crucial for new technologies like cellphones and military guidance systems. Michael Byers, a professor of politics and law at the University of British Columbia, said“Despite the concerns I have about Chinese foreign policy in other parts of the world, in the Arctic it is behaving responsibly,” he said. “They just want to make money.”

European Union vice president, Antonio Tajani, rushed here to Greenland’s capital in June, offering hundreds of millions in development aid in exchange for guarantees that Greenland would not give China exclusive access to its rare earth metals, calling his trip “raw mineral diplomacy.”

“We are treated so differently than just a few years ago,” said Jens B. Frederiksen, Greenland’s vice premier, in his simple office here. “We are aware that is because we now have something to offer, not because they’ve suddenly discovered that Inuit are nice people.”

Thomas R. Nides, United States deputy secretary of state for management and resources, said the Arctic was becoming “a new frontier in our foreign policy.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/science/earth/arctic-resources-exposed-by-warming-set-off-competition.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120919

Who owns the North Pole - Part 52

A Russian Orthodox bishop has lowered a "holy memorial capsule" into the sea at the North Pole in an attempt to "consecrate" the Arctic and reassert Moscow's claims to the territory.

The service was held by Bishop Iakov on the ice alongside the nuclear icebreaker Rossiya during a polar expedition titled "Arctic-2012", organised by the country's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute.

The metal capsule carried the blessings of the church's leader, bearing the inscription: "With the blessing of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, the consecration of the North Pole marks 1150 years of Russian Statehood." Bishop Iakov, who is thought to be the first Russian priest to visit the pole, emphasised that the consecration symbolised efforts "to restore Russia's position and confirm its achievements in the Arctic".

 A conservative Moscow think-tank suggested in July that the Arctic Ocean should be renamed the "Russian Ocean" and this week it was announced that MiG-31 supersonic interceptor aircraft will be based in the region by the end of the year.

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/9571743/Russia-consecrates-North-Pole-to-reassert-ownership.html