Huge UK household energy bills to remain, hammering the poorest disproportionately

Robert Stevens

Crippling household energy bills will continue to hit millions in Britain throughout autumn and winter. They will hit the poorest in society disproportionately.

UK household energy bills began to shoot up at the end of 2021, even before the war in Ukraine forced them to record levels. According to House of Commons research published in January, “Average bills were £760 in 2021 compared to £450 in 2020, a 36% real increase.” They continued to rise significantly following the outbreak of the war with a typical household now paying a current annual energy bill of £2,074.

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]

On Friday, energy regulator Ofgem announced that the price cap on bills will be lowered slightly for average households from October, but this will still make them unaffordable for many working class families, who will have the choice of eating or heating.

The price cap determines what 29 million households in England, Wales and Scotland pay per unit for their energy. The new price of electricity will be lowered to 27.35p from 30.1p per kWh, and the gas price will fall from 7.5p per kilowatt hour (kWh) to 6.89p.

Based on the new unit costs, from October 1, a typical household will pay an average of £1,923 a year. Many households with larger families or with old poorly insulated homes will pay far more. In comparison, the average household energy bill in winter 2021 was £1,277.

The fall in the unit cost of energy will be immediately offset due to the government ending its universal £400 energy bill support scheme. Forced on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak by mass disconnect and fear of a social explosion over rising fuel bills, this was paid in monthly instalments over winter 2022 to all households, regardless of income or energy consumption. There will also be a rise in the daily standing charge.

A study by the Resolution Foundation found that winter bill costs will rise for 7.2 million households in England—more than one in three (35 percent). Within the poorest tenth of households in England, almost half (47 percent) will face higher costs.

The think-tank noted in an August 25 article, “Gotta get through this—Energy bills this winter” that the “headline £200-a-year saving for a typical household” due to the unit cost of energy falling “masks a lot of variation, with the heaviest energy users in line for larger reductions in bills, and some households who use relatively little energy set to see bills rise this winter compared to last year.” Authors Jonathan Marshall and Emily Fry add, “In fact, any family with an energy consumption less than four-fifths of the average will see higher bills this winter than last, a situation that applies to around one-in-three (35 per cent) of households in England and close to half (47 per cent) of those in the lowest income decile.”

The think-tank warned “these extra costs will be substantial” for many families, noting, “13 per cent of households (2.7 million families) face energy bills rising by more than £100 this winter, a figure that rises to one in four (24 per cent) for the poorest households. And although the Government has increased its Cost of Living payments to £900 during 2023-24 (up from £650 in 2022-23), the rising costs of other essentials—most obviously food bills, which are up by £960 on average since 2019-20—mean this is unlikely to prevent another difficult winter.”

The assessment points to “One key group who faced the sharp end of the crisis last winter are generally poorer households who pay their energy bills via pre-payment meters (PPM). This winter, nearly half (47 per cent) of PPM customers are set to pay more to heat their home adequately than last year, with 600,000 of these households needing to pay £100 or more than last year.”

Standing charges vary from supplier to supplier. Between October and December 2023, average standing charges for customers on default tariffs will be capped in line with the levels set by regulator Ofgem’s overall price cap. On average customers must pay 53.37p per day for electricity and 29.62p per day for gas, excluding VAT, for a typical dual fuel customer paying by Direct Debit. This amounts to an extra £300 on electricity and gas bills every year—up 60 percent in the past two years for dual-fuel bills, and 113 per cent for electricity alone.

Increases in the standing charge will see the working class hit by price rises caused by the chaos inherent in the deregulated energy markets, with energy firms here one week and going bust the next—as the major players consolidate their grip over a multi-billion pound industry. The Resolution Foundation notes that standing charges are rising “to recoup the [multi-billion] costs associated with the wave of supplier failures, consumer defaults, and additional support to shore up energy companies’ finances.”

Face with criticism over the surge in the cost-of-living Sunak responded with an outburst last week that the working class should be grateful for all his government has done for them. With inflation still at nearly 7 percent and the more accurate RPI measure at 9 percent, Sunak told a business event, “A typical family will have had about half their energy bills paid for by the government over the past several months – that’s worth £1,500 to a typical family”, before having to acknowledge, “Now you wouldn’t have quite seen that because you would have still just got your energy bill, it would have been very high and you’d have been, ‘Oh my gosh, what’s going on’, but what you wouldn’t have realised, maybe, is that before that even happened, £1,500 had been lopped off, and the Government had covered it.”

The analysis by the Resolution Foundation exposes claims of Tory largesse. It noted that “the Government could point to the fact that it has expanded the Cost of Living Payments scheme in 2023-24 compared to last year”, adding “In particular, payments for around eight million families in receipt of means-tested benefits have increased from a maximum of £650 in 2022-23 to £900 in 2023-24, although the rates paid for those receiving the state pension or a disability benefit have not increased this year.”

The report emphasised, “But these payments do not represent a silver bullet. Linking eligibility to receipt of a social security benefit means that no payments are received by the estimated 2.3 million households who are in the poorest fifth of the population but do not receive means-tested benefits.”

Moreover, the months ahead will be devastating for millions trying to eke out an existence, as “even for those qualifying for the full amount, the Cost of Living Payments do not offset the litany of financial pressures that households are facing. Since 2019-20 the average household food bill has increased by £960, while other non-discretionary costs are also reaching new heights. Private rents for new lettings have increased by 10.3 per cent in the past year – renters are over-represented in households facing higher bills, with four-in-ten (39 per cent) private renters and six-in-ten (62 per cent) social renters set to fork out more on energy bills this winter than last – and higher interest rates means that households renewing their mortgage have faced an average increase of £1,500 per year on their repayments since the end of 2021.”

Mass opposition developing to CDC’s proposed anti-scientific infection control guideline

Katy Kinner

The CDC’s Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) met on August 22 for a continued discussion of the proposed watered-down, anti-scientific new infection control guidelines that would reduce infection control standards particularly surrounding aerosol transmission and the spread of multi-drug resistant organisms. 

HICPAC advises the CDC on infection control policies and is made up largely of healthcare upper management, infectious disease clinicians and senior level personnel from federal agencies including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The recommendations of HICPAC are not subject to any public oversight. 

The recent meeting was attended by members of the public and medical community who are fighting against the anti-scientific draft guidelines which include claims that masking is essentially ineffective or even harmful to individuals and the healthcare system. These claims were first presented during a discussion of the revised guidelines at a June 2023 HICPAC meeting. The “evidence” used to back these claims was made up of cherry-picked data from research studies that are widely recognized as flawed.

Amidst this backlash, the August 22 meeting did not focus on issues of COVID-19, masking and respiratory precautions. Instead, the committee attempted to steer into safe waters through a discussion of contact precautions and other standard precautions in healthcare. The issues of COVID-19 and respiratory isolation were only discussed by the public during the comment section. 

The guideline revision is not an arbitrary decision or a misguided mistake, but a conscious and criminal maneuver designed to ensure that another surge or another pandemic will not cause any slowdowns in the economy. Healthcare facilities represent the high-water mark in infection control. If mitigation measures are abandoned in that context, it provides the argument for jettisoning safety measures within any workplace or social setting.

Rising waste water levels and hospitalization rates indicate that a summer surge has been under way for several months without any warning or concerns raised by the Biden administration or public health organizations like the CDC.

The HICPAC guidelines are the latest in a trend of unscientific decisions prompted by governments around the world to stop virtually all surveillance and management of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In May, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Biden administration ended their COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE), disbanding the White House COVID Response Team. The CDC then ended all COVID-19 case reporting and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky—who championed pro-corporate and anti-public-health policies throughout her tenure—resigned. Walensky was then replaced by Mandy Cohen, a staunch supporter of lifting mask mandates and school reopenings. 

Patient Mike Camilleri works with physical therapist Beth Hughes in St. Louis, Missouri, on March 1, 2023. After contracting COVID-19 Camilleri was left with dangerous blood pressure spikes, a heartbeat that raced with slight exertion, and episodes of intense chest pain. [AP Photo/Angie Wang]

A full draft of the proposed guidelines has not been made available to the public. An introduction to the overhaul of the infection control standards can be most clearly seen in the slides from the Infection Precautions workgroup presentation from the June 8, 2023 meeting.

The guidelines propose a major change to the framework of infection control categories which previously separated infectious diseases into three categories, based on their mode of transmission, contact, droplet, and airborne, all of which then had corresponding best practices for PPE and isolation. The new guidelines simplify these categories to “by touch” and “by air.” 

The new “by air” category is further broken up into “routine,” “novel” and “extended.” Examples of diseases falling under the “routine” category include “seasonal coronavirus” and “seasonal influenza” which, according to the committee, only require a surgical mask for PPE, no eye protection and no airborne isolation room. The “novel” class includes “pandemic phase” coronavirus and influenza, which require an N95 mask and eye protection, but no airborne isolation room. 

There is no scientific basis for the distinction between “seasonal” and “pandemic phase” coronavirus and influenza. These fabricated categories serve to support the political campaign to declare COVID endemic, the purpose of which is to accustom the population to mass infection and death, adding the virus to a list of ever-present diseases instead of engaging in a fight to eliminate the virus, which is perfectly possible but opposed by the financial oligarchy because of its cost. 

The guideline draft also attempts to discredit the effectiveness of N95 respirators, citing flawed scientific studies to make the claim that surgical masks are equal to N95 respirators. 

In the three main studies referenced, the N95’s were only worn when in close proximity to the patient. In one study, healthcare workers donned N95’s only when six feet from the patient. In another study healthcare workers donned them when just three feet from the patient, removing their mask when out of this boundary. Such misuse of N95 respirators would obviously not be effective since aerosolized viral particles can spread 20 to 30 feet and remain in the air for hours. N95 respirators must be worn continuously and must be well-fitting in order to be effective, especially in indoor and poorly ventilated areas. 

In addition, all three cited trials only had healthcare workers wearing N95s around symptomatic patients. This is another major flaw in the studies as it is a well-known scientific fact that coronavirus is often transmitted from asymptomatic individuals. In fact, according to a CDC study from February 2021, 59 percent of COVID-19 transmission occurs from asymptomatic spread. 

The committee makes another dangerous claim that mask wearing—both surgical and N95—is harmful and has a negative impact on healthcare workers’ performance.

In the evidence review portion of the presentation titled, “Mask Adverse Events,” the committee cites several negative outcomes of mask wearing such as “headaches,” “difficulty breathing,” “acne,” “perspiration,” “difficulty talking,” and “work interference.” No reference is made to the “Adverse Events” from COVID-19 infection, such as multi-system organ failure, disability and death.

It is also notable that the new guidelines do not suggest other protective measures such as UV disinfection and HEPA filtration. They also do not address the fact that the current state of COVID-19 testing, even in the hospital setting, is disorganized and minimal, making it impossible to effectively put necessary infection control precautions in place. The guidelines for standard precautions—precautions for every patient regardless of infection status—do not include the bare minimum of a surgical mask. 

Due to mounting opposition against the guidelines, HICPAC had no choice but to allow for a limited discussion period open to the public. The committee did not respond to any of the public comments. 

Debra Gold, an employee of Cal OSHA, stated, “If we learned nothing from the tremendous illness and loss of life in the past three years of COVID crisis it is how important it is that public health recommendations be clear and strong enough to protect both individuals and patients and healthcare system as a whole.” She continued, “PPE Is only part of reducing transmission… the little we have seen of the draft guidelines does not include thorough discussion of isolation or early identification and isolation of infected people.”

Another commenter, Liv Grace, introduced herself as disabled and high risk and described how she is unable to safely access healthcare under the current conditions. Liv has caught RSV and COVID-19 at her infusion center, causing her to suffer from new kidney and heart issues. “One way N95 masking is not enough for me… This is a Catch-22, access healthcare or catch COVID and other dangerous to me infections to the point of further endangering my life or do not get care at all with the risk of further endangering my life… This is eugenics. I am Jewish and I see the writing on the wall… the history of not only the Holocaust but many genocides including the ongoing genocide of Native Americans, target disabled people first. I am literally begging for something to be done.”

A physician, scientist and pathologist, Kaitlyn Sunnling, stated, “I’m speaking in support of universal masking in healthcare ideally with the broad use of well-fitting N95s or better respirators as a new addition to standard precautions… matching our understanding of the science of airborne pathogens to our precautions in healthcare allows us to build public trust and destigmatize aerosol transmitted infectious diseases especially where asymptomatic spread is common as with covid. Denying the well-proven science of N95 respirators would be a significant step backward.” 

Dr. Sunnling added that patients should not be responsible for protecting themselves within the healthcare setting, asking, “Should patients have to ask their surgeon to wear sterile gloves?”

Petitions and letters are also circulating to address the anti-scientific HICPAC guidelines. One letter dated July 20, 2023 was sent by 900 experts in occupational safety and health, medicine, epidemiology, industrial hygiene, ventilation, aerosol science, and public health to new CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen. 

The ruling elite has already expressed a callous indifference to human life, expressed in the more than 24 million people who have perished over the last three and a half years of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the continued 10,000-person daily global excess deaths. Hundreds of millions continue to suffer from Long COVID across the globe, struggling on a daily basis with no viable treatment in sight.

Ukrainian journalists protest army censorship of reporting on the counteroffensive

Jason Melanovski

The National Union of Journalists of Ukraine has appealed to the Armed Forces of Ukraine over its severe restrictions on reporting in combat zones of the country’s stalled NATO-backed counteroffensive.

The appeal comes in the wake of a report by French newspaper Le Temps that the Ukrainian government had effectively banned all foreign journalists from visiting the front unless they had received personal permission from the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhnyi, a known admirer of the Ukrainian fascist Stepan Bandera. 

As the head of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine Serhiy Tomilenko reported on Facebook on Wednesday, “In recent days, the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine received numerous appeals from accredited journalists regarding severe restrictions on the work of mass media at the front. In particular, the media claim that the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has now completely banned filming in the combat zone, any coverage of special and foreign equipment, and the admission of the media to positions and command posts.”

Tomilenko noted that the National Union seeks “to protect the interests and rights of journalists” and requested that the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine offer answers to several questions concerning the restrictive ban on journalists working at the front.

“In particular, it is important for us to hear answers to the following questions: what contributed to such a large number of restrictions for accredited journalists regarding the coverage of events at the front? Do all these prohibitions apply only to our Ukrainian colleagues or to foreign ones as well? (The National Union has received reports that priority for work in the war zone is being given to representatives of foreign mass media),” Tomilenko wrote.

Tomilenko couched his appeal in pro-war nationalist terms, prostrating his organization before the right-wing government of President Volodymyr Zelensky. He claimed, “In fact, all these bans make it impossible for media representatives to show Russian aggression, tell and write about it, as well as highlight the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian defense forces to the occupiers.”

In the Le Temps article, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Defense Hanna Maliar claimed that the bans were a matter of “operational security” and cited an air attack on Ukraine’s 82nd Brigade that allegedly occurred in response to a Forbes article published from the front.

Maliar’s lying claims are typical of government officials who seek to both justify their attacks on democratic rights and cover up their own responsibility for the mass death of workers and youth. During the second Iraq War, the administration of President George W. Bush banned coverage of coffins of US soldiers returning from Iraq.

In reality, Ukraine’s Western-backed counteroffensive was destined to fail and result in mass Ukrainian casualties against an entrenched and well-fortified Russian army, a fact that was well known by the CIA and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported last week.

According to Hersh’s sources, the counteroffensive propaganda “was a show by [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky and there were some in the administration who believed his bulls..t.”

Rather than “operational security,” the fact that the Zelensky government has cracked down further on its censorship of the front is further confirmation that Zelensky’s vaunted counteroffensive is “slow and bloody,” as the Wall Street Journal admitted earlier this week.

Since the start of the counteroffensive in June, over 5,000 pieces of military equipment have been destroyed. It is estimated that at least 40,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, and undoubtedly tens of thousands more Ukrainian soldiers are permanently disabled or disfigured. 

While the Ukrainian government has intensified its restrictions as of late, censorship of journalists has been the policy of the NATO-backed Zelensky government throughout the course of the war.

Earlier in March, in the run-up to the ongoing counteroffensive, the Armed Forces of Ukraine updated its policy on journalists’ access.

“From now on, the commanders in the areas of responsibility will determine the zones for the presence of media representatives by their decisions. The following zones are provided: ‘green’, where the work of accredited media representatives is allowed without the accompaniment of a public relations officer or a press officer; ‘yellow’, where media representatives are allowed to work only accompanied by a press officer; and ‘red’, where the work of accredited media representatives is prohibited,” the Armed Forces representative Bohdam Senk stated.

The change was also protested by journalists at the time who objected to the arbitrary and restrictive nature of the “ red zones,” which they claimed were being applied to even peaceful areas.

As the Ukrainian Institute for Mass Media reported about the protest, “Members of the Media Movement, Ukrainian and foreign journalists declare the inadmissibility of the new excessive restrictions on the work of the media during martial law. ‘Zoning’ as it is introduced by operational-strategic groups of troops actually makes it impossible for journalists to work not only along the entire front line, but also in peaceful settlements.”

The increasing mass censorship of journalists has been noted even by publications that generally support the war and the relentless US propaganda of “unprovoked Russian aggression.”

As Luke Mogelsen, a contributing writer at the New Yorker, told the Intercept in June, “I’ve covered four wars, and I’ve never seen such a chasm between the drama and intensity and historic import of the reality of the conflict on the one hand, and the superficiality and meagerness of its documentation by the press on the other. It’s wild how little of what’s happening is being chronicled. And the main reason, though not the only one, is that the Ukrainian government has made it virtually impossible for journalists to do real front line reportage.”

The Zelensky government’s blatant attack on freedom of the press and its systematic undermining of any factual and honest reporting on the war not only exposes, yet again, the lie that the imperialist war waged against Russia in Ukraine is about “democracy.” It also underscores that nothing that is reported in the official pro-war media about what is happening in Ukraine can be taken at face value.

Acting Socialist Party-Podemos government indifferent to wildfires raging across Spain

Santiago Guillen

Spain is being devastated by forest fires raging without pause since March and covering 87,000 hectares, the equivalent of the same number of football pitches.

The most serious fire began on August 15 on the Canary Island of Tenerife, home to about one million people and a popular tourist destination known for its diverse volcanic landscapes, pine forests and green valleys, dominated by Mount Teide in the Teide National Park.

Pine forest of the Dorsal Mountain Range of Tenerife, before the fire, with Teide in the background [Photo by barraquito / CC BY-SA 2.0]

According to the regional government, the wildfires have burned 14,700 hectares of forest, 7 percent of the island’s surface. It is also affecting 1,000 hectares of the Teide National Park, where, according to the park director, the damage is irreparable. The fire, which forced the evacuation of more than 26,000 people, is the worst in the last 40 years in the Canary Islands—the seven-island archipelago located off the northwest coast of Africa.

The last decade has seen three of the worst years for fires in Spanish history. Last year was even worse, with 309,000 hectares destroyed, representing 39 percent of the 786,049 that burned in all of Europe that year and which, in turn, set the absolute record for the area burned on the continent.

Across Europe, more and more countries are being swept by wildfires. Last year, Romania was the second most affected European country after Spain with nearly 155,000 hectares destroyed, followed by Portugal with more than 104,000 hectares affected, France with more than 66,000 and Italy with almost 59,000.

This year, Greece has already seen 120,000 hectares burn, 0.91 percent of its surface, while Portugal, France, Italy and Cyprus also suffered major fires with more than 0.2 percent of their surface affected by the fire.

Outside of the European Union, wildfires have devastated countries such as Turkey, Tunisia and Algeria where 40 deaths were recorded as victims of fires in July. In Canada, more than 10 million hectares have burned in recent months with tens of thousands displaced, while the fire on the island of Maui in Hawaii has caused hundreds of deaths.

All these fires have common causes that have nothing to do with chance, bad luck or serial arsonists. These disasters are both foreseeable and preventable if enough resources are invested in forest management and the means to put them out. Above all, they are the devastating consequence of capitalist governments’ failure to effectively fight climate change, while imposing mass austerity to pay for imperialist war abroad and the enrichment of the financial aristocracy at home.

Spain has suffered a persistent drought across large swathes of its territory. Heatwaves are now a regular occurrence even before the summer season, with temperatures that in many cases exceed 40 degrees centigrade (104 °F). These factors intersect with a lack of forest management which allows debris and scrub to accumulate, fueling the spread of fires.

This is driving “mega-fires” to break out. These consist of large wildfires of more than 10,000 hectares, with high intensity and speed of propagation. Inazio Martínez de Arano, director of the Mediterranean Regional Office of the European Forestry Institute, told Atlántico Hoy that these fires have such an intensity that “they alter the dynamics of the upper layers of the atmosphere and generate winds that can be very difficult to model, so it is not possible for us to predict the behavior of the fire”.

Aridane González, president of the Scientific Committee of the Government of the Canary Islands for Climate Change, explained that fires like the one in Tenerife are caused by “changes in temperature, humidity, etc., all the ingredients to occur so that fires are more frequent and stronger.” She added that “now we are vulnerable to fires practically all year round, since the climatic conditions have changed”.

Residents try to reach their houses in Benijos village as police block the area as a wildfire advances in La Orotava in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain on August 19, 2023 [AP Photo/Arturo Rodriguez]

The first mega-fires in Spain this year occurred in March and in mid-May in Hurdes and Gata, burning 11,000 hectares, situations unthinkable on those dates just a few years ago.

Given the danger posed by climate change and the fact that 55 percent of the Spanish territory is covered by forests, one would think it would be a priority issue for the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government, in power since 2020. However, according to a Greenpeace study, to date, only 0.1 percent of the money from the European Union Next Generation bailout funds will be dedicated to forest management, while a huge proportion will flow ultimately into the coffers of the banks and corporations.

Funds for forest management amount to around €90 million, but Greenpeace calculates that about €1 billion a year is needed for the proper conservation of forests.

This year, military spending has broken all records, reaching €27 billion along with another €9 billion in other military expenditure approved. This is in addition to the hundreds of millions in financial and military aid sent to Ukraine to boost the war that NATO is waging against Russia in that country.

In addition to the lack of money for prevention, there are not enough resources to put out wildfires. In two of the regions hardest hit, Catalonia and Galicia, firefighters have been on strike against their precarious conditions.

In Catalonia, volunteer firefighters, made up of workers who earn €10 ($10.80) an hour to help put out wildfires in their free time, declared themselves unavailable to put out fires in various areas of the region. Josep Maria Alcalà, the president of the Association of Voluntary Firefighters of Catalonia, told El Món, “we have always been cheap labor” required to be available every day of the year. The firefighters are demanding formal contracts and medical and economic benefits similar to full-time firefighters who respond in the event of an accident.

In Galicia, 500 regional firefighters who work in rural areas declared an indefinite strike on June 15 to demand that the regional government improve their working conditions. But this is a “phantom strike” sponsored by the trade unions as no worker will take action given the great danger of wildfires, only refusing to work overtime.

The unions have not called for other forms of protest, nor have they coordinated the struggle of these workers with those of other sectors and regions or even with the Portuguese firefighters who face similar situations and have called several strikes throughout the summer.

Spain exemplifies the inability of capitalism to plan and organize the economy to combat climate change, instead squandering valuable resources for war.

Action to end the climate crisis in all its manifestations, including the climate-change-induced wildfires raging across Europe and North America, will not come from an appeal to capitalist governments or pseudo-left forces like Podemos and its new re-brand Sumar. They have shown time and time again their disdain and indifference to human life in their support for war in Ukraine, their murderous defence of Fortress Europe against migrants, the prioritization of profits over lives during the COVID-19 pandemic and now with the wildfires.

UK RAEng Enterprise Fellowships 2023

Application deadline:

29th August 2023 by 4pm

Tell Me About Award:

Enterprise Fellowships is a 12-month accelerator programme for creative and entrepreneurial engineers who have an impactful innovation ready to commercialise at the seed or pre-seed stage. Over the course of the year, we will equip you with the confidence, skills, experience and networks you need to bring your engineering product to market.

What Type Of Award Is This?

Entrepreneurship

Who Can Apply?

Broadly speaking, we support: 

• Researchers wishing to spinout a company from a university 
• Recent graduates seeking to found a startup 
• International PhD students (already based in the UK) wanting to spinout or startup  

You meet our key eligibility criteria if: 

• The Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of your solution is 4 or above 
• Equity investment in your business is less than 500,000 GBP 
• Your innovation is protectable and you own or co-own the IP 
• Within the founding team, you own the highest equity stake in the company 
• You are, or have the ambition to be, the CEO or COO of the business 
• For startups: you are not a student or otherwise employed during our programme  
• In addition for startups: you have completed your very first university degree by 1 July 2017 
• For spinouts: you are currently employed by the university 
• If relevant, your PhD viva will be held no later than 30 November 2022 

Which Countries Are Eligible?

African countries

Where Will Award Be Taken?

Remote

How Many Positions Will Be Given?

Not specified

What Is The Benefit Of Award?

What we offer works – we have provided £9.2 million in grant funding to upskill over 150 Enterprise Fellows, who have gone on to create companies valued over £550 million. As a charity, we don’t take any equity, all we ask in return is your passion and determination to become part of the next generation of entrepreneurs. 

You will receive: 

• Up to £75,000 equity-free startup funding grant, 
• Expert business mentoring and coaching, 
• 15 days of business training, 
• Subscription to our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit, 
• Access to our community of Hub Members, Academy Fellows, investors, industry experts and partners, 
• Flexible working space at the Taylor Centre, our physical hub, 
• Hub membership for life. 

How Long Is The Program?

12 months

How To Apply For Program?

1. Register and create a profile via the grant system
2. Read the Applicant Guidance notes below that are necessary to complete your online application

Register and Apply

Visit Award Webpage For Details

Share buybacks and the parasitism of US capitalism

Nick Beams

The economist William Lazonick is a long-time campaigner against share buybacks by major corporations which he rightly regards as an extreme form of parasitism, financial plundering and a major factor in social inequality.

His political perspective is, however, an entirely reformist one. He would like to see increased regulation, starting with a total ban on share buybacks, which, along with other regulatory reforms, would be aimed at bringing more investment into the real economy, instead of corporate profits being used to feather the nests of share traders, financial investors, corporate executives and speculators.

In this Oct. 14, 2020 file photo, pedestrians pass the New York Stock Exchange in New York. [AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File]

But notwithstanding his hankering for a return to the “good old days” before the onset of what he calls “predatory value extraction,” and his delusionary hope that someday, somehow the Democratic Party might take a stand curb it, his analysis provides important facts and figures.

The data he provides expose the rot and decay at the very heart of the US economy, but also very importantly, that the resources generated by the labour of the working class—reflected in corporate profit numbers—are more than enough to provide a major uplift in living standards.

In other words, the answer to the question so often raised by the opponent of even the mildest social reforms “where is the money going to come from?” is answered, at least partially in the data which Lazonick provides.

He sets out a summary of his findings, based on a just published book Investing in Innovation: Confronting Predatory Value Extraction in the US Corporation, in an article on the web site of the left-reformist Institute for New Economic Thinking.

Lazonick begins by noting that according to Oxfam in 2022, with inflation eroding real wages, some 32 percent of the US workforce had hourly wages of $15 or less. And that even in the high-tech sector, which contains the largest number of high-paid jobs, insecurity has been growing with 225,000 layoffs in the first seven months of this year on top of 165,000 layoffs in 2022.

The main instrument of “predatory value extraction,” he writes, is the open market repurchase of a corporation’s shares in order to manipulate the stock price.

“In 2012–2021, the 474 corporations included in the S&P 500 Index in January 2022 that were listed throughout the decade funneled $5.7 trillion into the stock market as buybacks, equal to 55 percent of their combined net income, and paid $4.2 trillion to shareholders as dividends, another 41 percent of net income.”

He notes that stock buybacks increase the gains of share sellers, “including senior corporate executives, with their copious stock-based pay, and hedge-fund managers, who are in the business of timing the buying and selling of shares on the stock market.”

Since they became widespread in the 1980s, after previously being ruled as an illegal form of stock market manipulation, share buybacks have “contributed to inequitable income distribution, unstable employment opportunities, and fragile productivity growth in the US economy.”

One of the most egregious expressions of this phenomenon is in the pharmaceutical industry. Five of the largest industrial companies engaged in this operation—Aman, Gilead Sciences, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Pfizer—come from this sector.

The American population is forced to pay some of the highest drug prices in the world. Big Pharma “justifies” this on the grounds that high prices for existing drugs are needed so that the profits they generate can be used to finance research for new medicines.

As Lazonick’s data reveal, this is complete fiction. The profits are used to boost stock market values.

The distribution of income to shareholders and share sellers via dividends and share buybacks of the 14 pharmaceutical companies in the S&P 500 in the decade 2012–2021 represented 110 percent of net incomes compared to the average of 96 percent.

“The $747 billion that the pharmaceutical companies distributed to shareholders/sharesellers was 13 percent greater than the $600 billion that these corporations expended on research and development over the decade,” according to Lazonick.

Share buyback operations extend across the board, including energy and the high-tech firms and the aircraft manufacturer Boeing.

“Boeing became highly financialized after its merger with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Its senior executives’ obsessions with the company’s stock yields bears much of the blame for the crashes of its 737 MAX planes in October 2018 and March 2019.”

From the beginning of 2013 to the second crash on March 10, 2019, Boeing did $43.4 billion in buybacks, equal to 118 percent of its net income over this period on top of the 43 percent distributed as dividends. In other words, money that should have been spent on securing the highest possible standards for its planes was delivered into the hands of stock market players including company executives.

Apple is another major practitioner of buybacks. In 2018 when it was able to repatriate $285 billion in cash, due to legislation passed by the Trump administration, CEO Tim Cook said the company would buy “some of our stock.”

It turned out that stock purchases in 2018 were $72.7 billion, eclipsing by a long way the previous record high of $45 billion in 2014. A major beneficiary was Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world.

In his ongoing work on share buybacks, Lazonick has documented a significant component of the rot and decay at the heart of American capitalism, which is at the centre of its deepening historic crisis.

But nowhere does he provide an analysis of it. Insofar as he provides an explanation of why there is not the reinvestment of profits in industry and improved wages as there was, at least to some extent, during the post war boom, it is based on shifts in policy, in particular the legislation under the Reagan administration in 1982 which made previous illegal share buybacks legal.

This orientation is based on a political perspective, namely, that changes in the other direction, starting with a ban on share buybacks and changes to the way corporate executives are paid and rewarded, can bring about a course correction.

What he leaves out is any analysis of the deep-seated shifts in the very foundations of the capitalist economy which have been the driving force of the changes in the way corporations operated and the changes in the regulatory framework.

The end of the post-war boom in the 1970s resulted from a decline in the rate of profit. This was not a mere conjunctural downturn but the outcome of a process discovered by Marx as arising from inherent contradictions within the capitalist economy itself.

Its eruption to the surface of economic life had major consequences.

Starting in the late 1970s and extending into the next decade, there was a massive restructuring of economic and class relations—the assault on the working class in the 1980s, the shutdown of whole sections of industry and the creation of rust belts, the globalisation of production to take advantage of cheaper sources of labour.

A key aspect of this “restructuring” was the rise and rise of financialisation, that is, the accumulation of profit not through the expansion of production and investment as had been the case in the post-war boom but via financial market operations.

The removal of the ban on share buybacks was only one of many changes in the decade of the 1980s such that financial operations once regarded as illegal, or at least highly dubious, are standard operating procedure in the financial world of today.

As Marx noted, a fall in the rate of profit is accompanied by “swindling and the general promotion of swindling.” This is no longer an episodic or passing phenomenon but, as the ever-deeper financial crises of the past three decades reveal, is embedded in the US economy.

This parasitism, of which share buybacks are an expression, is not only the cause of ever widening social inequality. It finds its consummate expression in the drive by US imperialism to counter its economic decline through wars of plunder.

Medical Research Foundation Climate Change Research Grants 2024

APPLICATION DEADLINE:

28th September 2023 12:00 BST

• Shortlisting notification (request for rebuttal): January 2024
• Deadline for rebuttal: February 2024
• Funding decision: March 2024
• Feedback on funding decision: March 2024

Tell Me About Award:

Climate change is a severe and continually growing threat to human health globally. It’s estimated that climate change will cause 250,000 additional deaths per year between 2030 and 2050 (World Health Organization). This is an area that urgently needs research investment, which is why we are committing £4 million towards new research aimed at tackling the impact of climate change on health in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Medical Research Foundation is inviting applications for collaborative research grants, from mid-career researchers working on the impact of climate change on health.

This scheme is open to pairs of mid-career researchers, in countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the UK, who are making the transition to research independence and seeking to progress in their field. Projects should aim to develop a new collaboration or solidify an existing partnership between two researchers, expanding their research networks and building their research profiles to develop emerging research leaders in both countries.

Research supported through these grants should aim to increase understanding of the mechanisms underpinning, and processes involved, in the impact of climate change on infectious diseases and other non-infectious health outcomes that disproportionately affect sub-Saharan Africa.

Research proposals in the broad area of the impact of climate change on health could include, but are not limited to:

• understanding the biological mechanisms underpinning the impact on human health of climate change
• the development and implementation of treatments for climate-change related illnesses
• understanding and reducing the impact of climate change on health and well-being.

Research into climate change itself, that does not consider impacts on health outcomes is not within the scope of this funding call.

The research supported in this funding call is possible thanks to the support of our generous donors.

TYPE:

Research Grants

Who Can Apply?

Applications should represent a collaborative project between a mid-career researcher who is a national of and based in a sub-Saharan African country, from an organisation with an established legal entity in sub-Saharan Africa, and a mid-career UK-based researcher at an eligible institution (UK HEIs, Research Council research institutes, hospitals, and other independent research organisations). Nationality and country of residence/employment may be different.

UK-based applicants must hold a PhD, DPhil or MD, are expected to have postdoctoral experience and be in the process of, or be ready for, transition to research independence.

Sub-Saharan Africa-based applicants must hold a PhD, DPhil or MD, have active research experience and be in the process of, or be ready for, transition to research independence.

WHICH COUNTRIES ARE ELIGIBLE?

sub-Saharan African countries & UK

HOW MANY AWARDS?

Not specified

What Is The Benefit Of Award?

Applicants may apply for a research grant of up to £300,000 to support their collaborative project, over a maximum of a three year period. The Foundation has committed to making £4,000,000 available in this area.

Additional package of career-enhancing support

As well as funding innovative research projects, the Medical Research Foundation is committed to supporting its researchers’ career progression by providing access to a career-enhancing programme of support, including mentoring opportunities, training, networking events, and further funding only open to MRC and Foundation funded researchers.

Recipients of the Research Grants on the Impact of Climate Change on Health will also be given access to a bespoke programme of support that will aim to strengthen their skills and bring the climate change community together. Opportunities will include training in the establishment of equitable partnerships (delivered prior to the start of the research projects), grant-writing workshops and networking events.

How To Apply:

Applicants should apply online using our online grants management system.

Please see here for Guidance for Applicants.

Applicants must use our Résumé for Researchers template in their application.

Visit Award Webpage for Details