Energy bill surge threatens UK arts/culture venue cuts and closures

Paul Bond

Soaring inflation and rocketing energy costs are pauperising millions of workers and their families. The increases now having a devastating impact throughout society are an indictment of capitalism’s inability to safeguard any aspect of cultural or artistic life. Art and culture venues across Britain face crippling bills that could see many close. 

The rising energy price cap, placing an upper limit on the price per kilowatt hour used, applies only to households. It is predicted that the energy cap increase just announced, bringing typical bills to £3,549 a year from October, will shoot up to £5,400-a-year in January and to £7,200 by April.

Small businesses including arts venues do not even have a price cap safeguard. Rising energy costs have seen venues’ outgoings triple recently. Steeper rises are forecast, against predictions that inflation could reach 21 percent by early next year.

In The Times, music critic Richard Morrison’s comparison was revealing: “Will many go under, as happened a century ago when the country emerged from the First World War only to stagger into a nightmare decade of hunger marches and mass strikes?”

The crisis follows a decade of stagnating grants, exacerbated by the government’s wilfully negligent response to the impact of COVID on the arts. Over a decade the Treasury’s arts budget was cut by two thirds from its 2010 level, forcing venues and organisations to rely on commercial income.

By 2020, most UK venues with producing companies earned around 85 percent of their running costs, receiving 15 percent or less in government subsidies.

The inevitable result is that venues which managed to survive this far now confront the effect of devastating rising costs. Even venues championed as funding models are now at risk.

The Lowry Arts & Entertainment Centre's main entrance in Salford Quays, Greater Manchester [Photo by Skip88 / CC BY-SA 4.0]

The Lowry in Salford is a modern gallery and theatre complex, hosting the collection of painter L.S. Lowry, and presenting or commissioning some 900 productions across all genres annually. It has around 850,000 visitors each year. Chief Executive Julia Fawcett told the Guardian it generates more than £30 million GVA [gross value added] per annum and operates in line with the government’s (non-)funding model. Only 6.3 percent of the charitable institution’s total funding comes from public money, in grants from Arts Council England (ACE), Salford council and Greater Manchester combined authority. The Lowry takes 93.7 percent of its income in earnings and contributions.

The fragility of the model can be seen in the impact of the pandemic. In 2020-21, The Lowry posted losses of £659,000.

Built in 2002, it is more energy efficient than older venues, but all venues are expensive. Rising costs of materials are seeing theatre set construction costs increasing 30-40 percent. The Lowry’s estimated annual building-related costs are £1.9 million. Rising supply costs will triple its energy bills this winter, posing “a major challenge,” as its energy bills are expected to reach nearly £1 million. This, said Fawcett, is “substantially more than the figure the Lowry receives annually from [ACE]’s National Portfolio funding programme”—around £860,000.

The arts are at the mercy of the corporate profiteers. Fawcett could not state explicitly what quotes they had received from energy companies because The Lowry are renegotiating commercially sensitive contracts.

Sadler’s Wells, Britain’s London based national dance venue, has also announced an expected tripling of its energy costs to around £900,000. This follows more than a decade of standstill funding, amounting to a real terms cut of 25 percent in its ACE grant. 

Chief Executive Sir Alistair Spalding said, “Frankly, we are looking at ticket prices.” He expects to raise top-end prices for big, popular shows, pushing the arts further out of the reach of working families.

Richard Morrison pointed to top West End prices of £325 for a recent production of Cabaret starring Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley. This accelerates the death of theatre as a popular art form, as an impresario told Morrison, “You will always get people willing to pay top whack for top stars, but middling shows with middling performers are drawing smaller and smaller audiences.”

Despite the warning signs, the impact has not yet been seen in full, in part because some venues are still working through the end of earlier contracts.

Ventnor Exchange, on the Isle of Wight is championed by ACE as a model of small-scale regional arts development. The creative arts hub and social enterprise combines theatre with a record shop and bar, using profits to fund local cultural opportunities for young people, including the annual Ventnor Fringe arts festival.

Jack Whitewood, Co-Director of Ventnor Exchange, spoke to the WSWS about their situation. “Energy bills have risen dramatically in recent months. Fuel and power generation costs at Ventnor Fringe were up 82 percent on 2021, and there is the additional knock-on effect of the rise in haulage and transport costs too, caused by the rising fuel costs. Similarly, our electricity bills at Ventnor Exchange have more than tripled in the last six months.”

Jack Whitewood, Co-Director of Ventnor Exchange outside the venue [Photo by Jack Whitewood @jack_whitewood/Twitter]

He said the “dramatic and rapid rise in costs … is very concerning.” They had expected rising costs, “but not at this scale or speed.” As “the current trajectory is not sustainable,” they were looking at reducing energy costs where possible, particularly at the Fringe.

However, they had “limited manoeuvre to cut energy consumption at Ventnor Exchange short of reduced hours.”

Whitewood and his team are looking to open co-working facilities, both to support the venue’s work and in recognition of the impact of the crisis on families and small businesses.

He was blunt on the future: “We’ve heard far too little from the government on how they will support families with rising energy prices, and there has been complete radio silence on the pressures facing small businesses and charities, who do not benefit from any energy price cap at all. Many businesses are indebted from COVID, so unless there is urgent action, I would predict there is a real risk of a rise in unemployment in the coming months.”

Ventnor Exchange’s problems are not unique. Mark Davyd, of the Music Venue Trust (MVT), has said 50-100 members of that network face a “frankly imminent crisis” that is “likely to close more music venues than COVID.”

The MVT is a British charity founded in January 2014 to help protect, secure and improve the UK’s music venues. One venue reported an electricity bill 640 percent higher than its last. The additional £31,000 being demanded is higher than the manager’s salary.

Museums, particularly in older buildings, report wild energy increases. Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle has already raised adult admission to £15 following a 138 percent increase in its annual fuel bill.

The Catalyst Science Discovery Centre and Museum in Widnes was sent a tariff increase of 400 percent by its existing supplier. While looking for alternative suppliers, this hike was increased to 460 percent. They eventually negotiated a contract with a different supplier with an increase of 353 percent, from £9,700 to £44,000.

MA policy manager Alistair Brown warned, “Without additional government intervention, organisations will have to make difficult decisions about whether to close for the winter, cut opening hours, or cut other areas of activity simply in order to afford their energy bills.”

Brown called for “concerted action from government—as we saw during the COVID crisis—to help reduce the sudden shock of these huge bills.” 

This will not happen, as the Johnson’s criminally slow and inadequate response to the pandemic’s impact on culture demonstrates. Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has pledged only to maintain the domestic price cap, while handing over a further £29 billion in a bailout to the energy conglomerates.

A theatre executive told Richard Morrison, “The mood music out of DCMS [the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport]” about such a rescue package “is saying ‘not a chance’.”

The government’s “levelling up” agenda would see money removed from major arts bodies unless they relocate activity to towns deemed “culturally deprived”. This is being used to dress up further cuts and funding freezes. The same executive said, “Things could get pretty bloody when the Arts Council announces its next round of funding in October.”

Jack Whitewood told us he had not yet heard anything from ACE. “I would imagine many cultural venues, especially those with large buildings, will be sounding the alarm very soon.”

New Zealand Labour government to expand exploitative migrant labour schemes

John Braddock

New Zealand’s Labour government announced last week that it will ease restrictions on temporary migrant workers to address severe labour shortages in critical areas. Despite the removal of most COVID restrictions and the reopening of international travel, the Reserve Bank has described labour shortages as the worst in 50 years.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at press conference at Parliament in Wellington, Oct. 11, 2021. (Robert Kitchin/Pool Photo via AP) [AP Photo/Robert Kitchin/Pool Photo via AP]

With official unemployment running at 3.3 percent, Immigration and Workplace Relations Minister Michael Wood told media that the immigration system was being “streamlined” to help employers struggling with not enough workers.

An extra 12,000 tourists can now come to New Zealand and work over the next year, while people on existing work holiday visas will be given a six-month extension. About 4,000 working holiday-makers are in the country and more than 21,000 temporary workers have had their visas approved.

With employers resolutely opposing growing demands by workers for wage increases above the rate of inflation, Wood announced lower wage thresholds for migrant workers in key sectors, particularly aged care, hospitality, construction, meat processing and tourism.

In May, the government “tweaked” the immigration system to make it easier for some migrants to get residency, with then-Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi declaring there would be no return to relying on low-skilled and low-paid migrants. For most jobs, employers were required to pay migrants the median wage of $27.76, which is above the legal minimum of $21.20.

Under the new rules, tourism and hospitality employers will be able to pay these workers $25 per hour. Meat processing companies can pay $24 for entry-level jobs, with a cap on visa numbers set at 320. Workers will get seven-month visas. The pay thresholds will be updated each year in line with changes to the median wage.

Wood flatly denied that the reduced pay was discriminatory or illegal, and said local workers would not be disadvantaged, telling Radio NZ: “This is actually a positive policy that will assist in terms of ensuring that we have sufficient labour supply for key parts of our economy and will lift conditions for workers in those sectors.”

This is a lie. The new policy is another measure that will be used, with the support of the trade unions, to push down wages as inflation, currently 7.3 percent, devastates workers’ living standards.

This week 135 staff, a third of the workforce, were summarily sacked at the main ski fields on Mt Ruapehu in the central North Island, following one of the worst ski seasons in decades. Operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts shut down the Turoa field, retaining just 17 of the company’s designated “essential skills” international workers to carry out technical work.

Heavy restrictions remain on permanent immigration. Labour took office in 2017 allied with the Green Party and anti-immigrant NZ First, promising to sharply reduce migrant numbers, which it has done. Even now, thousands of visa holders and family members are still unable to return. Despite a desperate shortage of healthcare workers, the government has placed draconian residency requirements on overseas applicants for nursing positions.

In another policy to boost the exploitation of temporary migrants, Labour has announced a new program for Pacific Islanders, purportedly to develop “labour mobility” in the region. Minister for Trade and Export Growth Phil Twyford said this would build on the “successes” of the current Recognised Seasonal Employers (RSE) scheme, expanding it into the meat and seafood processing sectors.

The RSE scheme, launched by the then Labour government in 2007, allows for 16,000 low-paid workers annually from Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji to work in the $NZ10 billion horticulture and viticulture industries. A similar program, begun under Australia’s Rudd Labor government, has run there since 2008.

A recent investigation by Stuff reporter Kirsty Johnson revealed some RSE workers are housed six to a room, charged $150 a week to sleep in freezing and damp conditions, falling sick repeatedly, and denied paid sick leave. One worker living in a crowded motel unit became so unwell he was coughing blood, but his boss initially refused to take him to the doctor, telling him to go and buy paracetamol instead.

The government’s Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Saunoamaali’i Karanina Sumeo subsequently investigated the workers’ conditions. She wrote on Twitter that many RSE workers “live in sub-standard, over-priced, overcrowded, damp and mouldy homes without basic amenities,” adding that some of what she had seen warrants criminal investigation. Pacific workers’ visas tie them to a specific employer which, according to Sumeo, can result in employer “over-reach” into controlling a worker’s basic rights.

Previous investigations in both New Zealand and Australia have exposed appalling conditions faced by the highly vulnerable workers, who are at the sharp end of relentless assaults by employers and successive governments on conditions and wages. In March, the Vanuatu government initiated its own inquiry into the Australian program, citing concerns about exploitation.

Governments promised that RSE workers would earn enough during their stay, in New Zealand capped at seven months in any year, to send money back to their families and provide economic “benefits” to the fragile island economies, which depend heavily on remittances. In reality, RSE workers are mostly paid the minimum wage as a base rate, before crippling deductions to cover airfares, visas, phones, housing and transport.

Attacks on immigrants’ rights escalated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Figures released to Stuff under the Official Information Act revealed complaints about exploitation and mistreatment went up by 259 percent from 2020 to 2021. Many people on temporary visas, including some on the RSE scheme, were unable to return home. Some were surviving on food stamps due to visa conditions leaving them unable to find work.

Canberra and Wellington have recently announced forthcoming reforms of the Pacific schemes. Australia’s Labor government will extend its program to include a four-year visa, and the ability of workers to bring their families with them.

New Zealand has promised a “full review” of its scheme next year. Wood declared that the RSE scheme was “important to New Zealand” and the Pacific but “we must treat people fairly.” Workers should have no confidence in such false promises, which have been made again and again with no improvement in conditions.

The aim of the Australian and New Zealand governments is to tighten their grip over the Pacific region, which they regard as their own colonial “backyard.” Their hypocritical references to the Pacific “family” are a cover for a diplomatic and military build-up in the region, supporting the US-led confrontation with China, which threatens a catastrophic war.

New Zealand’s practice of importing Pacific people as a source of disposable and cheap labour has a long and brutal history. During the early 1960s, thousands of Pacific workers were recruited for menial and factory jobs, only to find themselves later victimised by racist immigration laws, and subject to infamous “dawnraids” forcefully expelling them from the country.

The RSE schemes are just as inhumane, notwithstanding the fact that Pacific governments, which depend heavily on aid from Australia and NZ, have collaborated in implementing them. In a visit to New Zealand in June, Samoa’s Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa avoided laying any blame over the appalling conditions facing workers. She assured horticulture employers that her government simply wants to “raise the quality” of the RSE scheme.

Like governments throughout the world, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s administration has for years sought to scapegoat immigrants for the housing crisis, social inequality and pressure on public services. Its cynical moves to ramp up the exploitation of migrant workers is part of its escalating assault on the entire working class.

Ukraine announces beginning of offensive to retake Kherson

Clara Weiss

On Monday, the Ukrainian government and military announced the beginning of a counter-offensive against Russian troops, focused on recapturing the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine.

Natalia Humeniuk, the spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern command, declared, “Today we started offensive actions in various directions, including in the Kherson region.” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky threatened in his Monday night address, “If they want to survive, it is time for the Russian military to flee. The occupiers should know: We will oust them to the border. To our border, the line of which has not changed.”

On Sunday, Zelensky had reportedly held a secret meeting with representatives of Ukraine’s defense and security sectors which was attended by the heads of the armed forces, the intelligence agencies, the ministry of defence, the ministry of internal affairs and the Ukrainian security service, as well as other defence forces.

Based on an anonymous source in the Ukrainian military, CNN reported on Monday that “the operation began at night with massive shelling of Russian positions and the rear.” The source also claimed that the Ukrainian military had taken four villages in the Kherson region. 

Russian authorities initially dismissed these claims, arguing that what was taking place was a “virtual offensive,” designed to garner more military support for Ukraine from NATO. However, by Monday night, Russian media reported that the Ukrainian military had suffered heavy losses in its “attempted counter-offensive” in the Kherson and Nikolaev regions. Russia’s Ministry of Defense claimed that the Ukrainian army lost over 560 soldiers, 26 tanks and two SU-25 fighter jets.

The Russian press also reported that the Ukrainian army had engaged in heavy shelling of Nova Kakhovka, a city in the Kherson region that is located directly on the Dnepro River. The city has been used by the Russian army as a logistical center since almost the beginning of Russia’s invasion in February. The Ukrainian military reportedly used American-made HIMARS rocket systems to fire on the city’s electrical power plant and water station, forcing the shutdown of electrical and water supplies to the city’s almost 46,000 residents.

The current offensive was preceded by weeks in which the Ukrainian army, backed by Washington, carried out a series of strikes on military bases and ammunition depots in Crimea, a peninsula in the Black Sea that was annexed by Russia in March 2014. On August 20, Daria Dugina, the daughter of the far-right Russian ideologue and war supporter Alexander Dugin, was killed in a car bomb that was clearly designed to murder her father as well. These attacks were an attempt to provoke a military response by Russia to provide a justification for NATO’s expansion and escalation of the war. The military strikes on Crimea were also aimed at weakening Russia’s aviation and military logistics in advance of the offensive now underway.  

None of the military efforts by Ukraine, which for years has ranked as the poorest country in Europe, would be possible without the arms and funding from NATO and, above all, the US. Amidst record inflation, Washington has spent some $50 billion on weapons for Ukraine since February alone, while ceasing all COVID-19 relief funding and targeting social welfare benefits for millions of Americans. Last Wednesday, Biden pledged another $3 billion for weapons and ammunition for at least another three years. 

Predictably, the Ukrainian military is shamelessly being cheered on by the US media. In a piece that reads largely as an advertisement for US weapons manufacturers and the Ukrainian military, the New York Times on Sunday praised the “craftiness” and “engineering ingenuity” of Ukrainian soldiers, who have been finding ways to combine highly sophisticated US weapons with their decades-old Soviet-era tanks and military equipment.  

The reality behind this US-funded and armed “craftiness” is a horrific blood bath. The US claims that the Russian army has suffered 80,000 casualties. Estimates of Ukrainian casualties are also put in the high tens of thousands. Ukrainian officials themselves admitted in the early summer that they were losing up to 500 men each day. Several weeks and likely thousands of deaths ago, the Washington Post noted in late June that the war in Ukraine was on track to becoming one of the bloodiest in modern history. In addition to the tens of thousands of dead and wounded, over a quarter of the deeply impoverished Ukrainian population of 38 million has been displaced by the war. 

US imperialism, which has laid waste to entire societies in the Middle East and North Africa, could care less about how many tens or hundreds of thousands, even millions, of Ukrainians and Russians die in this war. 

In its recent Congress resolution, “Mobilize the Working Class Against Imperialist War,” the Socialist Equality Party stressed: “The war against Russia is the continuation and intensification of the drive for US global hegemony that was initiated with the first invasion of Iraq in 1990-91 and intensified following the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. Biden’s declaration that Putin cannot remain in power revealed the basic aims of the war: The removal of the present regime in Russia, its replacement by an American-controlled puppet, and the breakup of Russia itself—in what is referred to as “decolonizing Russia”—into a dozen or more impotent statelets whose valuable resources will be owned and exploited by US and European finance capital.

“With extreme recklessness, American imperialism is risking a nuclear war that could result in the extinction of human life on the planet. The destruction of Russia and control of the Eurasian land mass, a longstanding geo-strategic goal of US imperialism, is viewed by the Pentagon and CIA as essential preparation for and part of an onslaught against China. What was referred to by Lenin during World War I as a ‘redivision of the world’ is now underway. US imperialism intends to ‘redraw the map of the globe.’”

This assessment has been borne out by the developments in the weeks that have followed the passing of this resolution. Alongside its reckless escalation of the war against Russia in Eastern Europe, Washington has doubled down on provoking an open military conflict with China. Much like it provoked war with Russia over Ukraine, the US is seeking to provoke a war with China over Taiwan. 

Following the incredibly provocative trip by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on August 2 to Taiwan, the US sent two warships through the Taiwan Strait on Sunday. 

On Monday night, Politico reported that the Biden administration is planning to formally ask Congress to approve a $1.1 billion arms sale to Taiwan. According to Politico, the package, which is still being developed, will include “60 AGM-84L Harpoon Block II missiles for $355 million, 100 AIM-9X Block II Sidewinder tactical air-to-air missiles for $85.6 million, and $655.4 million for a surveillance radar contract extension.”

From September 1 through 7, Russia and China will be engaging in the joint VOSTOK-2022 military exercises in Russia’s Far East. India and several former Soviet states, as well as Nicaragua and Syria, are expected to join the military drills.

US cuts off free COVID-19 rapid testing

Patrick Martin

The Biden administration confirmed Monday that it will “pause” its program to send millions of Americans free rapid antigen test kits through the mail at the end of this week. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) made the brief announcement on its website, blaming Congress for failing to provide the necessary funds.

In addition to an end to postal delivery of free kits, the administration will stop free testing in schools, homeless shelters, shelters for victims of domestic violence and prisons. Children and the poorest and most oppressed sections of the working class will be “flying blind” into conditions of a spreading pandemic with new and likely more infectious and lethal variants of SARS-CoV-2.

The HHS will conserve the relatively small number of test kits that remain, planning to distribute them in the fall when a new upsurge in COVID-19 infections is expected, agency officials said. In other words, while the number of free test kits goes down to zero, the number of cases of infection will rise significantly.

Under the program established last January, every American could request a total of 16 free test kits through a federal government portal. Free testing will now be limited to state and federal government “pop-up” test sites and to those who have private insurance plans that cover that service.

The HHS action is only one of many steps being taken by the White House to shut down all efforts to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 and give the virus free rein to do its deadly work. Under slogans like “learning to live with the virus,” the Biden administration has fully adopted the mass infection policy of the Trump administration that came before it. 

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Blum recently wrote that the Department of Health and Human Services is preparing to bring an end to the Public Health Emergency (PHE) first declared in 2020 in the initial stages of the pandemic, even though infections, hospitalizations and deaths are at far higher levels. He wrote: “In the meantime, CMS encourages healthcare providers to prepare for the end of these flexibilities as soon as possible and to begin moving forward to reestablishing previous health and safety standards and billing practices.”

Masking is gone, social distancing is gone, contact tracing is gone, lockdowns and remote schooling are gone, rapid testing is going. Schools are reopening this month to full-scale in-person education, with overcrowded classrooms serving as Petri dishes for mass infection and the development of new and more dangerous variants.

The terrible consequences of this policy have already been demonstrated. Under Trump, 400,000 Americans died of COVID-19. Under Biden, another 670,000 have died, with the cumulative death toll expected to pass 1.2 million in the fall. All these figures are likely to be significant undercounts. On a world scale, while the World Health Organization officially tallies the dead at 6.5 million, published estimates by such conservative sources as The Economist magazine place the global death toll at more than 20 million.

The HHS statement and innumerable White House declarations have sought to place the blame for the end of free testing on Congress, and particularly on the intransigent opposition to further COVID-19 funding on the part of the 50 Republicans in the US Senate. They have blocked passage of additional COVID-19 funding to pay for the purchase of test kits, prophylactic treatments like Pfizer’s Paxlovid, and new vaccines, modified to deal with new mutations of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2.

This is a transparent effort to cover up the decision by both capitalist parties to allow all COVID-19 funding to expire. Biden and Senate Democratic leaders repeatedly slashed the amount of COVID-19 funding, which they had paired in the same legislation as additional military aid to Ukraine to ensure its passage. Eventually, in the course of protracted wrangling in the Senate, the Democrats dropped the COVID-19 portion of the bill entirely, passed the Ukraine military aid, a whopping $40 billion, and then claimed they had been unable to overcome Republican objections.

Then a different legislative vehicle, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, became available, providing more than $400 billion in funding for Medicare and climate change alleviation. This was immune from a Republican filibuster because it was enacted through budget “reconciliation,” a once-a-year process that requires only 50 votes. But Senate Democratic leaders and the White House declined to incorporate COVID-19 funding into the bill.

White House COVID-19 response coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha has made it clear that the Biden administration is dropping any pretense of fighting the pandemic as it surges in the fall. Speaking at a US Chamber of Commerce function this month, he said, “One of the things we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about in the last many months, and we’re going to continue this work, and you’ll hear more from the administration on this, is getting us out of that acute emergency phase where the U.S. government is buying the vaccines, buying the treatments, buying the diagnostic tests.”

He added, “My hope is that in 2023, you’re going to see the commercialization of almost all of these products. Some of that is actually going to begin this fall, in the days and weeks ahead.” 

No doubt his business audience was appreciative of the decision to turn over pandemic testing, vaccination and prophylactic treatment to the private sector, giving pharmaceutical companies and health care providers a guaranteed market of tens of millions of people. Those who can afford to pay, either out of pocket or through insurance, will provide a lucrative source for profits. Those who cannot afford to pay—the very people who are old, poor and sick and most vulnerable to COVID-19—will do without, perhaps paying instead with their lives or health.

Even those who can afford to pay may find the needed vaccines and tests unavailable. Without the federal government providing a guaranteed buyer for billions of doses of vaccines, and providing the funds to finance the massive costs of developing, conducting trials and bringing the products to market, Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna and other pharmaceutical companies could not have developed the original vaccines so quickly.

The dwindling of federal support for new vaccines and new tests is already being felt, hampering efforts to develop modified vaccines to keep up with the new variants and subvariants generated by the uncontrolled spread of a highly adaptable virus. The funds currently allocated would pay for new boosters for only half the US population, and the trendline is going down, not up.

Ultimately, the pharmaceutical industry, on the basis of market considerations, not the imperative to save every life, will develop only those medicines and treatments that are profitable, regardless of how many millions are excluded—not only in the United States but around the world.

Savage UK energy bills pauperise millions, threatening many deaths

Robert Stevens

Within hours of UK average household annual energy bills shooting up Friday by a staggering 80 percent to £3,549 a year, latest projection from independent forecasters are for savage rises to £5,400-a-year in January and to £7,200 by April.

The latest rise already makes bills unaffordable for many. The annual energy price cap as recently as October 2020 was £1,042.

Demonstrators hold up placards and cards as they protest outside the British energy regulator Ofgem, which put up the price cap for gas and electricity by around 80 per cent for most households, in London, August 26, 2022. [AP Photo/Alastair Grant]

The price cap is set by energy regulator Ofgem. The overall costs cited in the media are based on typical usage on a default (standard variable) tariff. But in reality there is no upper limit for the 24 million households in England, Scotland and Wales. The cap only puts an upper limit on the price per kilowatt hour (kWh) used, which has now risen from 28 pence to 56 pence per kWh. It is predicted that for many households, particularly large families with extra energy needs, next April’s energy cap increase could see them paying £10,000 or more for their annual fuel use.

According to research by the Trades Union Congress, energy bills in the last three months of this year will soar 35 times faster than wages and 57 times faster than benefits. While monthly bills could be around £500 a month in January for those on an average tariff; for around 4 million mainly poor households forced to use pre-payment meters, bills will rise faster still. The Resolution Foundation think tank predicted that for prepayment meter users, “Typical energy bills in January alone could hit £714—over half of their monthly disposable income.”

A low-income family will be forced to hand over 46 percent of their income on energy bills, four times more than last year. For a single parent family on a low income, 66 percent of their income will go on energy. A pensioner will lose 40 percent of their disposable income on energy bills and a single adult on a low income faces a plunge into debt, losing a staggering 120 percent of their income to pay energy bills. Vulnerable layers, including the 75 percent of already indebted households with a disabled person will go under.

The rise in prices is plunging many households into penury, unable to shop, heat their homes, or even wash.

Last week, National Health Service chiefs made an extraordinary intervention, warning the Conservative government that thousands will die due to unaffordable energy bills. At least 10,000 people already die annually in Britain as a result of “fuel poverty”.

Fuel poverty charity National Energy Action (NEA) said that compared with a year ago, the number of households in fuel poverty would double to 8.9 million in October. NEA chief executive, Adam Scorer, warned, “We will have a million more homes that will not be heated this winter… that leads to more ill-health, it leads to more death.”

In April and May, financial expert Martin Lewis warned that unless people were fed and able to keep warm, there would be civil unrest. His prognosis in May was based on projections of bill rises “in the middle of October to £2,600 in the middle of winter…” The October rise to £3,549 announced already dwarfs Lewis’s worst case prediction and the rise in January of up to £5,400 will bring the suffering of millions to unheard of levels.

Speaking on Friday to BBC Radio’s Today programme, Lewis said, “I've been accused of catastrophising over this situation. Well, the reason I have catastrophised is this is a catastrophe, plain and simple.”

The rise in bills is a significant factor in the surge in inflation with the most accurate measure RPI at nearly 12.5 percent, with estimates from US financial service group Citi that it will soar to 21 percent in the first quarter of 2023.

Meanwhile, price gouging means Britain’s main energy suppliers have raked in super-profits of over £15 billion this year so far this year. The Edinburgh-based Harbour Energy PLC, the UK’s largest independent oil and gas business, has recorded a gigantic 12-fold increase in profits. Last week it announced that half-year profits for 2022 had reached $1.3 billion and that it would pay out an extra $200 million to shareholders.

A Unite union report, “Corporate Profiteering and the Cost of Living Crisis” noted, “Even excluding energy firms, profits of the UK’s biggest listed companies increased by 42%... The average profit of the 230 non-energy FTSE 350 companies, excluding investment trusts, that have filed 2021 results increased to £385m in 2021, up from £271m in 2019.”

Energy costs are rising exponentially throughout Europe, but UK corporations are still outliers. The euronews website reported, “Even before today's hike was announced, UK households faced some of the highest prices in Europe—nearly double France. Only the Czech Republic was higher than the UK, which was followed by Italy and Estonia.”

The British ruling elite is impervious to demands that immediate relief be made available to alleviate suffering, with the energy conglomerates refusing to give up a penny. From the ruling class the message is: “There is a war in Europe which Britain is in up to its neck, we are handing over billions in military aid to Ukraine and it has to be paid for by the working class.”

Speaking from Kiev last Wednesday to mark Ukrainian independence day and wallow in the continuation of NATO’s proxy war, outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared, “We know that if we’re paying in our energy bills for the evils of Vladimir Putin, the people of Ukraine are paying in their blood.”

Armed Forces Minster James Heappey said that backing Ukraine’s war against Russia means that a “really expensive winter lies ahead” and has to be borne by working people, “whatever the short-term pain and cost might be”.

On Sunday, Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi doubled down declaring, “The reality is that we should all look at our energy consumption. It is a difficult time. There is war on our continent…. We have to remain resilient.”

Thatcher clone Liz Truss, who is expected to be named the new Tory leader and replace Johnson as prime minister in a week’s time, is offering nothing in the face of the pauperisation of tens of millions. Even the Conservative-backing Sun newspaper was forced to criticise her energy “plan” that is based on scrapping a few green levies and will save households just £11 a year!

There are only plans for repression as anger grows among millions, expressed in a growing strike wave. Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid wrote, “As the crisis spirals, the Sun on Sunday can reveal ministers are planning for a cost of living crime wave and possible riots.

Water companies pour raw sewage into English waterways and onto beaches

Paul Bond

Raw sewage is being pumped onto Britain’s beaches with rainwater overspill.

Britain has experienced its hottest, driest summer for 50 years with farmers warned of serious impact to potato and carrot crops, while even drought-resistant crops like maize are suffering. Drought was declared in several areas, with water restrictions like hosepipe bans being imposed.

When the weather broke last week, parts of the country saw flashfloods on parched earth under the sheer volume of rainfall. On August 17, Shanklin, on the Isle of Wight, experienced 47.8mm of rain, most of it in a sustained downpour.

The deluge could not overcome the drought after such a sustained dry period. Instead, nearly 40 beach pollution warnings were issued in 48 hours as sewage poured onto beaches in water overflows.

The Environment Agency (EA) warned people not to swim at 17 bathing sites in southwest England because of bacteria levels. The charity Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), which operates a live interactive map of coastal water quality, highlighted sewage spills or pollution at 37 sites across the south coast and 50 nationally. Some 90 beaches have been affected so far. Affected beaches in the North include Skegness in Lincolnshire and Robin Hood’s Bay, North Yorkshire, where warnings not to swim were issued.

The Surfers Against Sewage map and footage shared on social media give a better view of the situation than statements from the water companies. When footage of raw sewage pumping out at Bexhill, East Sussex was tweeted, Southern Water was still advising there had been no local discharges. Southern Water then downplayed the seriousness, saying, “The release is 95-97 percent rainwater and should not be described as raw sewage,” and “Storm releases were made to protect homes, schools and businesses from flooding.”

The EA licences using storm overflows in extreme conditions to relieve pressure on the system, but this has increasingly become standard practice. Terms of the EA’s permits are frequently breached. Last year saw 62 serious pollution incidents, the highest since 2013.

In 2020 there were more than 400,000 raw sewage discharges in England, for more than 3.1 million hours—a 37 percent increase on 2019. Sewage discharge has risen 2,553 percent between 2016 and 2021, according to EA figures.

This is likely an underestimate. In 2021, a quarter of sewage discharges in all waterways, not just bathing designated areas, went unreported because sewage monitors were not working or not installed. In Devon and Cornwall, this included one in eight monitors at designated bathing locations.

EA figures showed 1,717 storm overflows without a monitor installed at all, and 1,802 providing information for less than 90 percent of the time, with possible high discharge during those periods.

This pollution has a catastrophic impact. Only 14 percent of British rivers are considered ecologically healthy. In the mid-1980s, around 20,000 salmon were caught annually in English and Welsh rivers. That has now halved.

In 2020, there were 153 reports of sickness from people using affected sites. Noroviruses can enter shellfish when sewage enters their growing areas. Last year untreated waste was dumped into shellfish-inhabited waters 29,000 times. Three French MEPs have called on the European Commission to take “political and legal” measures against British pollution of shared shellfish waters. The three members of President Emmanuel Macron's En Marche party also warned that sewage leaks risk bathing waters on the French coast as well as in the south.

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The EA has been systematically defunded, particularly regarding surveillance of sewage dumping. Between 2010 and 2020 its environmental protection grant was cut from £120 million to £40 million. Nearly a quarter of this cut was implemented as part of Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) “efficiency” plans under Liz Truss in 2014-16. Truss oversaw overall cutting of EA funding by £235 million. A favourite for promotion in any possible Truss cabinet, should she become prime minister, is Lord David Frost, who recently declared there was “no evidence” for a “climate emergency.”

In the first half of this year, the EA failed to attend 12 of the 28 most serious reported pollution incidents.

England and Wales’s water and wastewater services were privatised by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in 1989, creating 10 regional private companies. Privatisation was proposed in 1984, and again two years later, but faced huge popular hostility. It was shelved prior to the 1987 election for fear of generating opposition. When the Tories were returned to power, however, privatisation was rushed through.

The result was a social, environmental and economic catastrophe for millions, while the companies and their shareholders cashed in. A University of Greenwich study in 2017 estimated that consumers in England were paying £2.3 billion per year more for their bills than if water had remained a state provision. The water companies have become sought-after acquisitions by private equity firms. Between 1991 and 2019, the parent companies paid out some £57 billion in dividends, an average of more than £2 billion a year.

The government wrote off all debts on privatisation and speculation has fuelled profits. Yet, by 2019, the companies had still amassed £48 billion in debt—less than they have paid to shareholders.

The government has continued to protect them as this smash and grab raid takes place. Last year an amendment was tabled to the Environment Bill that would have legally forced the companies “to take all reasonable steps to ensure untreated sewage is not discharged from storm overflows.”

The government opposed even this measure. Tory MPs argued that the uncosted amendment would require infrastructure changes costing hundreds of billions—an indictment of the deteriorated state of the water system following privatisation due to the lack of basic infrastructure investment. The usual weasel words about higher water bills were offered up. 

The amendment was rejected 265-202 and triggered a public backlash. The government responded by announcing a plan to cut the number, frequency and length of overflow discharges. On August 11, a week before Britain’s waterways and beaches were once again drowning in excrement, it was announced that the “strategy” was delayed and would appear “in due course.”

DEFRA, responding to the French MEPs’ complaints with the lying claim that the Environment Act “has made our laws even stronger on water quality.” The Independent this week reported that all wastewater companies in England and Wales failed to meet their targets for tackling pollution or sewage floods in the last reporting year.

Fines have occasionally been imposed, like the record £20 million penalty on Thames Water for pumping 1.9 billion litres of untreated sewage into the Thames in 2017. But these are simply transferred to customers. It remains business as usual for the companies, who are once again being investigated for failure to manage treatment works and comply with permits.

The companies are supposedly monitored by regulatory body Ofwat. Ofwat’s 2013-17 head, Cathryn Ross, is now a director at Thames Water. Thames Water is losing around 600 million litres of water a day through pipe leakage. Its CEO, Sarah Bentley, receives £1.6 million in salary and bonuses.

The EA was forced to admit, “Over the years the public have seen water company executives and investors rewarded handsomely while the environment pays the price. The water companies are behaving like this for a simple reason: because they can.”

Pfizer’s anti-COVID pill Paxlovid shows no benefit for younger adults

Benjamin Mateus

In its latest guidelines, from August 8, 2022, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) gave one of its strongest recommendations to Paxlovid for patients at high risk of progressing to severe COVID-19, regardless of vaccination status. The list of underlying medical conditions that raise one’s risk of severe COVID-19 is long and accounts for more than four out of 10 adults (138 million Americans, including 54 million who are 65 or older). Close to 4 million prescriptions have been filled since Paxlovid was authorized.

However, the results of a new retrospective observational study out of Israel published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) seem to place a question mark over the strength of these recommendations, in particular, with the Omicron subvariant.

The report’s authors found that Pfizer’s antiviral medication Paxlovid offered little to no benefit for younger adults. However, it did reduce the risk of hospitalization for high-risk seniors. Notably, supplementary material from the original study of Paxlovid in high-risk non-hospitalized adults with COVID-19 during the Delta wave had demonstrated benefits in those younger than 65, albeit the difference compared to the placebo was much less than in those 65 and older.

The study’s authors utilized the electronic medical records from almost 110,000 patients enrolled in Clalit Health Services, Israel’s largest state-mandated health service organization. Nearly 4 percent, or 3,900 of the patients, had taken Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir) after contracting COVID-19.

Among those over 65, there was a 73 percent decrease in the hospitalization rate and a 79 percent reduction in the risk of death. However, patients between the ages of 40 and 65 saw no benefit in taking the antiviral medication in either category, regardless of previous immunity status.

One of the study’s primary limitations is that it was non-randomized, which can introduce bias in its conclusions. The authors remarked: “Our study showed that only a minority of patients who were identified as high risk and eligible for nirmatrelvir [Paxlovid] therapy received the antiviral therapy. We do not know why other eligible patients did not receive treatment, and there may be some selection mechanism that is not explained by the observed confounders.”

These findings have significant implications, as the use of Paxlovid is rising amidst repeated surges of infections that run roughshod over the population, as COVID-19 is allowed free reign as a matter of policy. People are turning to these medications to reduce their risk of severe disease and lessen their symptoms, without a clear understanding among patients, medical providers and pharmacies of the indication for these drugs. This has consequences for the availability of and access to these medications and raises additional issues, such as the potential development of a Paxlovid-resistant variant.

In the context of potential misuse of Paxlovid, the recent announcement before the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation by White House COVID-19 response coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha that the Biden administration will soon be shifting responsibility for procuring tests and therapeutics to the commercial sector has dire consequences for the working class.

Paxlovid (Credit: Kches16414 License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International)

On the near horizon is the lifting of the pandemic emergency measures that cover COVID-related care for all Americans. The implications of returning to the usual business of medicine is that those who are uninsured or underinsured will forgo these life-saving measures when they contract COVID-19 so as to save money for groceries and fuel or pay their rent. Even the new bivalent vaccines will arrive with a price tag. Meanwhile, the more affluent will have no qualms in accessing them, further deepening the class distinctions that the pandemic has exposed.

However, the results of the recent study out of Israel are not surprising. In June, Pfizer announced it was discontinuing enrollment in its EPIC-SR [Evaluation of Protease Inhibition for COVID-19 in Standard-Risk] trial. Preliminary results indicated it had no significant benefits for unvaccinated adults without any risk factors or for previously vaccinated people with at least one risk for progressing to severe disease.

Another critical study from Hong Kong published in Lancet Infectious Diseases on the same day as the Israeli study but which went unmentioned in the press offered further evidence of Paxlovid’s limited therapeutic role. The authors reviewed their clinical experience with Paxlovid and Lagevrio, Merck’s antiviral pill, Molnupiravir, in hospitalized patients. They compared them to hospitalized patients who did not receive those medications during the horrific wave of infections that slammed into the semi-autonomous region in February and March.

Though Lagevrio has been essentially dismissed for its comparatively lower efficacy (30 percent versus 90 percent in initial trials) compared to Paxlovid, a head-to-head test has never been conducted. However, the Lancet study found that hospitalized patients receiving either oral antiviral medication had a reduced chance of dying compared to those who did not receive them.

The mortality risk reduction for Lagevrio was 52 percent, and for Paxlovid it was 66 percent. Those receiving antivirals had a lower risk of their disease progressing, but the drugs did not significantly impact their need for mechanical ventilation or ICU admission. The patients in the study averaged in age from mid-70s to early 80s.

The authors wrote: “Results of our subgroup analyses suggested a possible lack of significant benefit in younger patients (aged ≤ 65 years) and those who had been fully vaccinated, which would support prioritizing the prescription of oral antivirals to older people and those not adequately vaccinated, who are also likely to be at increased risk of progression to severe COVID-19.”

Given the results of these studies, it bears mentioning that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recently estimated that approximately 95 percent of Americans aged 16 and older have some level of immunity against COVID-19.

Dr. David Boulware, a University of Minnesota physician and researcher, told MarketWatch, “Paxlovid will remain important for people at the highest risk of severe COVID-19, such as seniors and those with compromised immune systems. But for the vast majority of Americans who are now eligible, this really doesn’t have a lot of benefit.”

These studies come on the heels of recent reports that First Lady Jill Biden, who was recently infected with COVID-19, was confirmed to be reinfected, having suffered a rebound infection after completing her Paxlovid course. She is in isolation again. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is donning his mask for the proscribed 10 days as a close contact, per the new CDC guidelines.

Though it was assumed that rebound was a rare phenomenon, the repetition of the phenomenon first in Dr. Anthony Fauci, then President Joe Biden and now his wife Jill Biden brings to the fore the question of whether rebound is far more common than most had anticipated in an Omicron-dominant pandemic.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has tasked Pfizer with conducting a trial to be completed by September 30 of next year to see if a second five-day course of the drug would help prevent the “rare” phenomenon. The official request was sent by letter on August 5 during Biden’s second convalescence.

Pfizer responded in an email confirming the assignment, saying: “We are working with the FDA to finalize a protocol to study patients who may be in need of retreatment. We will share updates in due course.” However, as experts have noted, there do not appear to be any additional benefits from the second course of Paxlovid in regard to preventing severe disease and hospitalization.

In April, Bloomberg reported that the Biden administration was “on the hook to pay Pfizer nearly $5 billion for pills it’s already ordered to treat COVID-19.” The White House was planning to use the $10 billion in COVID-19 funding from the Senate to cover the cost of 20 million courses of the COVID-19 antiviral pills. The other half has been designated for purchasing the bivalent COVID-19 boosters. However, as funding has been exhausted, there has been a decisive shift to commercializing these treatments, leaving millions in the lurch as the fall and winter seasons fast approach.

Meanwhile, Pfizer is teaming up with the Chinese pharmaceutical firm Zhejiang Huahai in a five-year deal to manufacture and sell Paxlovid exclusively in China. Huahai announced the agreement on August 17, though Pfizer has remained publicly silent.

In February, the drug was given emergency use authorization in China, where a large part of the elderly population has remained unvaccinated and at risk of severe COVID-19 should an outbreak reemerge in the only remaining country that has maintained a Zero-COVID policy.