The world is experiencing extreme weather.  In the US, California’s drought is the worst in 100-years while the East Coast faced a massive snowstorm with freezing temperatures. On the other side of the world, Australia continues to deal with intense summer heat and droughts, causing major bush fires. There has been severe winter flooding in the UK and Europe; extreme cold and snow in the Eastern US and Japan and so on.

Now this may just be random, outliers in the normal distribution of weather conditions, or it could be that the globe is reaching a peak in a cycle of weather, or it could be the ever-growing impact of climate change as the world heats up.  In fact, it could be all three, as the first two possible causes can be considered as immediate or cyclical and the last (climate change) as structural or ‘ultimate’.  The facts speak.  Since 1997, the world has experienced the 13 warmest years ever recorded out of 15, according to the UN.  June 2012 marked the 328th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average.  In 2013, extreme weather events included several all-time temperature records.  Snow cover in Europe and North America was above average, while the Arctic ice was 4,5% below the 1981–2010 average.

Northern Hemisphere weather extremes have been linked to the Arctic sea ice melting.  In January alone, 11233 weather-related deaths were reported in India.  Bangladesh faced the lowest temperature since country’s independence.  In Europe, last summer’s weather was bizarre.  Finland and most of Northern Countries got the highest temperatures in Europe during May and June, while Western- and Middle Europe faced much cooler weather and even their wettest May and June ever.  Overall, prolonged heat waves in the Northern Hemisphere set new record high temperatures.

There’s little doubt that climate change is contributing to the extreme weather disasters we’ve been experiencing.

Numerous studies, such as the US  NOAA’s 2011 State of the Climate report, shows the clear links between extreme weather and human-induced climate change.  In the UK, the media is bouncing about the extreme levels of rain and wind hitting the island and causing significant and prolonged flooding.  The UK Met Office, the body that forecasts the weather, announced that climate change was likely to be a factor in the extreme weather that has hit much of the UK in recent months: “all the evidence suggests there is a link to climate change” and “there is no evidence to counter the basic premise that a warmer world will lead to more intense daily and hourly rain events.”  The UK Met office said there had been the “most exceptional period of rainfall in 248 years”.

Climate models are forecasting increased episodes of flooding for the UK under climate change conditions.  According to the UK Met Office, four of the wettest five years have occurred since 2000, a statistic made all the more remarkable given the drought between 2010 and 2012. Peer-reviewed scientific research, performed by academics in collaboration with RMS scientists, found that climate change increased the likelihood of the floods that impacted England and Wales in the year 2000 in which 10,000 homes and businesses were flooded due to heavy autumn precipitation.  And Britain’s Rowntree Foundation study, found that this was a direct result of the physical principle that a warmer atmosphere holds higher amounts of water vapour and UK regional climate models predict increased winter rainfall (especially in the north and west) and more intense, highly localised summer rainfall (especially in the south and east). These predictions also accord with recent changes in rainfall over the period 1961–2006 which have seen many parts of the UK affected by severe and highly damaging floods.  The study concluded “Whilst no single flood can unequivocally be attributed to climate change, there is evidence that the probability of floods (in this instance, the regional floods affecting England and Wales in 2000) is increasing as a result of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.”

But while the  British press gushes about the sorry state of a few thousands people in the richer and leafier parts of England like Somerset or Surrey, the most damage from extreme rainfall, flooding and wind is likely to be in the poorer urban areas.  As the Met Office put it: “there is now little doubt that a warmer and wetter UK will experience more floods with greater impacts in urban areas.”  In particular, there is the increased risk of pluvial flooding.  River banks overflowing is called fluvial flooding; pluvial flooding is when  combined systems (storm water and foul water sewers) are overwhelmed, the foul water sewers surcharge onto the streets. The resulting flood is a mixture of surface water and untreated sewage which produces a more severe health hazard.

Pluvial flood risk accounts for approximately one-third of flood risk from all sources in the UK.  Approximately 2 million people in UK urban areas (settlements with a population over 10,000) are exposed to an annual pluvial flood risk of 0.5 per cent or greater (‘1 in 200-year’ event).  An additional 1.2 million people in urban areas could be put at risk by 2050 from a combination of climate change (300,000) and population growth (900,000).  Settlements across the UK with higher rainfall also tend to have greater levels of social deprivation.

As one blogger put it: “The Environment Agency has taken its fair share of blame for the flooding misery in Somerset , but there is an industry which has escaped criticism. And unlike the quango, it’s not short of a billion or two. Step forward the privatised water industry which has a key role in dealing with our storm and sewage water. In the last six years water companies have made £11 billion in profits from our water bills, surely enough to have stopped its customers from having raw sewage flooding into their homes and down their streets every time there is a heavy downpour.  Dispatches has been investigating the role of the water companies in the country’s recent flood problems and while Somerset have been dealing with record rainfalls and storm surges many homes across the country have been dealing with another consequence of the deluge: sewage flooding into their homes and down their streets.  When it rains heavily, our underground infrastructure can become overwhelmed and raw sewage can get discharged onto our streets , rivers and to a growing number of unfortunate people into their homes. According to the Consumer Council for Water, complaints from homeowners about sewer flooding are up by 50% compared to last year.”  

The private sector and the private water management monopolies that are supposed to provide decent water and sewage facilities are not not up to the task.  Profit for shareholders comes before service to the public.  As a result, basic infrastructure investment in sewage and water, roads, rail etc is inadequate – and yet the world, including the richer capitalist countries, is facing increased risk of ‘natural disasters’ as the global climate changes and, with it, the weather conditions.

Every year there is a major disaster in the emerging economies, with thousands dying and hundreds of thousands losing their homes and livelihoods.  But the media only remembers the events that hit the rich economies. The most infamous was the Katrina hurricane, the bursting of the levees and the flooding of the homes of the poor in New Orleans.  Not only did the federal and local governments fail to act quickly and efficiently, we now know that warnings of such a calamity had been voiced years before.  But instead of spending more to upgrade the levees, federal and state governments actually cut back on such infrastructure funding. After all, such spending was of no value to rich living up on their hilltop homes.

It’s the same story in the current flooding crisis in the UK.  In November 2012, the government announced plans to spend £120 million (US$183 million) on flood defences, split between new areas targeted for protection and speeding up protection already being built.  But this came after a period of budget cutting, with government climate advisers in the summer of 2012 noting a 12% decrease in flood defence spending from the previous year. Construction began on 93 new flood defences in February 2013 with a government pledge of an additional £2.3 billion (US$3.5 billion) until 2015.

Despite this activity, some of the largest projects, like the £80 million (US$122 million) coastal defence at Rossall, Lancashire, are to protect from storm surge rather than the pluvial flooding  that dominated 2012’s losses. According to the RMS UK Inland Flood Model, an annual flood loss of £1.2 billion (US$1.8 billion) can be expected approximately once every decade. The RMS model also estimates that only 50% of the average annual loss (AAL) comes from major river flooding, with the other half from small river and stream flooding, flash flooding, pluvial flooding, and localized heavy precipitation.

Even the classical economist of capitalism and the so-called guru of free markets, Adam Smith recognised the need for public spending in infrastructure because the private sector could not do it.  In his Wealth of Nations.  Smith explained: “The first and last duty of the sovereign is that of erecting and maintaining those public institutions and those public works, which though they may be in the highest degree advantageous to a great society are, however, of such a nature that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual.” And Smith meant by this “good roads, navigable canals, harbours and education”.

The American Society of Civil Engineers has continually complained that America’s infrastructure is rotting away.  It found that one in five American bridges were “structurally deficient”.  While the number of miles travelled by cars and trucks had doubled in the past 25 years, highway lane miles had risen only 45%.  Demand for electricity had increased by 25%, but the construction of new transmission facilities had fallen by 30%.  This deterioration had lost 870,000 jobs that could have been secured with new projects, while the costs of moving goods had risen significantly. The ASCE reckoned that there was $100bn of potential work available. Instead the US Congress plans to cut such spending by 35% over the next six years.

More extreme weather is on its way and the risk of calamity involving millions is rising sharply.  To avoid this, we can rely only on uninterested private monopolies and governments engaged in cutting back on so-called ‘discretionary’ public spending.  It’s another consequence of the dominance of the capitalist mode of production.  There is a UN summit in New York on climate change and the weather in September.  We may have to rebuild Noah’s Ark before then.

Michael Roberts

Source: http://leftunity.org/time-for-noahs-ark-again/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=time-for-noahs-ark-again&utm_reader=feedly

The Financial Secrecy Index ranks jurisdictions according to their secrecy and the scale of their activities. A politically neutral ranking, it is a tool for understanding global financial secrecy, tax havens or secrecy jurisdictions, and illicit financial flows.

The index was launched on November 7, 2013.

Shining light into dark places

An estimated $21 to $32 trillion of private financial wealth is located, untaxed or lightly taxed, in secrecy jurisdictions around the world. Illicit cross-border financial flows add up to an estimated $1-1.6 trillion each year. Since the 1970s African countries alone are estimated to have lost over $1 trillion in capital flight, dwarfing their current external debts of ‘just’ $190 billion and making Africa a major net creditor to the world. But those assets are in the hands of a few wealthy people, protected by offshore secrecy, while the debts are shouldered by broad African populations.

Yet rich countries suffer too: in the recent global financial crisis, European countries like Greece, Italy and Portugal have been brought to their knees by decades of secrecy and tax evasion.

Secrecy jurisdictions – a term we often use as an alternative to the more widely used term tax havens – use secrecy to attract illicit and illegitimate or abusive financial flows.

A global industry has developed involving the world’s biggest banks, law practices and accounting firms which not only provide secretive offshore structures to their tax- and law-dodging clients, but aggressively market them. ‘Competition’ between jurisdictions to provide secrecy facilities has, particularly since the era of financial globalisation took off in the 1980s, become a central feature of global financial markets.

The problems go far beyond tax. In providing secrecy, the offshore world corrupts and distorts markets and investments, shaping them in ways that have nothing to do with efficiency. The secrecy world creates a criminogenic hothouse for multiple evils including fraud, tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance, escape from financial regulations, embezzlement, insider dealing, bribery, money laundering, and plenty more. It provides multiple facilities for insiders to extract wealth at the expense of societies elsewhere, creating political impunity and undermining the healthy ‘no taxation without representation’ bargain that has underpinned the growth of accountable modern nation states. Instead of depending on tax, many countries are forced to depend on foreign aid.

This is not just a ‘developing country’ issue either: it hurts citizens of rich and poor countries alike.

Click here for the full 2013 ranking

What is the significance of this index?

In identifying the providers of international financial secrecy, the Financial Secrecy Index reveals that the traditional stereotype of tax havens is misconceived. The world’s most important providers of financial secrecy are not small, palm-fringed islands as many suppose, but some of the world’s biggest and wealthiest countries.

It shows that the illicit financial flows that keep developing nations poor are predominantly enabled by rich OECD member countries and their satellites, which are the main recipients of or conduits for these illicit flows. The trillion-dollar figure for annual illicit financial flows out of developing countries, above, compares with just US$130 billion or so in global foreign aid. So for every dollar of aid provided by OECD countries to developing nations, ten dollars or so flow back, under the table, towards OECD nations and their offshore satellites.

The implications for global power politics are clearly enormous, and help explain why widely heralded international efforts to crack down on tax havens and financial secrecy have been rather ineffective, despite many fine words from G20 and OECD countries: for it is these countries — which receive these gigantic inflows — that set the rules of the game.

Although there have been some positive changes since our last index in 2011, the infrastructure of global financial secrecy remains alive and well.

For too long, governments and campaigners concerned with cross-border finance focused on narrow problems such as terrorist financing and on certain kinds of money laundering, while ignoring much bigger flows involving tax evasion, abusive trade pricing and a range of other crimes and abuses. These larger problems operate through, and perpetuate, exactly the same mechanisms of offshore financial secrecy that facilitate cross-border flows of terrorist and drug financing. Tackling the smaller issues, while ignoring the bigger ones, cannot work.

The only realistic way to address these problems comprehensively is to tackle them at root: by directly confronting offshore secrecy and the global infrastructure that creates it. A first step towards this goal is to identify as accurately as possible the jurisdictions that make it their business to provide offshore secrecy.

This is what the FSI does. It is the product of years of detailed research by a dedicated team, and there is nothing else like it out there.

 

http://www.financialsecrecyindex.com/

In the wake of the Syrian regime’s likely use of chemical weapons last week, the media is focused on UN access to the location of the attack.

This focus is misplaced. Even incontrovertible evidence of the government’s use of gas will not create a legal mandate for intervention. Debate should focus instead on how best to help the Syrian people, not on the false promise of international law.

How can it be possible that massacring an entire neighbourhood in its sleep could not be illegal? In international law, governments generally have the right to do as they please unless they accept specific and explicit commitments otherwise. This is known as the Lotus principle, named after the famous Lotus case at the Permanent Court of International Justice in 1927. The government of Syria has not signed any treaty or accepted any legal obligation that outlaws the use of poisonous gas against its own people.

The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 is the main inter-state treaty on the subject. This treaty is a model of clarity: Its opening lines state that “each state party to this convention undertakes never under any circumstances … to use chemical weapons”. This is as clear as it gets in international law. Unfortunately, Syria has never signed the treaty and is not bound by it.

Syria also has not signed the treaty on the International Criminal Court – the “Rome Statute” – that makes it a war crime to use “asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and all analogous liquids, materials or devices” in war. Neither has it signed the Convention Against Torture; the “Ottawa Convention”, which bans landmines; the Convention on Cluster Munitions; or many others that attempt to regulate the instruments of warfare. Syria signed but never ratified the Convention on Biological Weapons. These treaties therefore do not apply.

Yet in 1953 Syria did sign the Geneva Conventions and, in 1968, the Geneva Gas Protocol of 1925. These are important commitments. The first establishes general rules for the treatment of civilians in wars, specifying that non-combatants not be subject to murder, torture, rape, or other cruel treatment. The Geneva Gas Protocol prohibits “the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids”.

The Syrian government has repeatedly broken the first of these commitments, and if it was responsible for the chemical attacks last week, then it has clearly broken the second as well. But the problem is that, legally, the Gas Protocol regulates only wars between states, not civil wars. It does not govern how a government behaves inside its own territory.

In other words, under its current obligations Syria is forbidden from using gas against its neighbours but not against its own people. The Geneva Conventions are important, but they say nothing about chemical weapons.

To be sure, there are exceptions to the Lotus principle: rules of law that exist without state consent. International law specialists call these “peremptory norms”. There are rules against piracy, genocide, slavery, torture and aggression. When Bart Janssens of Medecins Sans Frontiers said this week that the attack “would constitute a violation of international humanitarian law, which absolutely prohibits the use of chemical weapons and biological agents”, he was implying that there is a peremptory norm against the use of such weapons. And there is widespread condemnation that usually follows their use, as seen after the tragedy in Halabja, Iraq, in 1988.

But there is little history to back the claim that chemical weapons are universally prohibited. Many states continue to hold enormous stockpiles of chemical weapons, including the US and Russia, which suggests they do not believe they are inherently illegal. In fact, even among the 189 countries that have signed and ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, only half have made chemical weapons illegal through their domestic laws.

None of this absolves the Syrian regime of its atrocities. The Assad government continues to use any tool at its disposal to remain in power and clearly has no regard for the lives of its citizens. The fact that this latest massacre may not be a violation of international law does not exonerate Assad, should his government be found responsible. At this point, nothing can.

But those who want forceful action against Assad cannot rely on international law as justification. In this sense, the UN inspection team’s access to al-Ghouta, where the attack took place, is irrelevant. Those who care about the people of Syria should focus on political measures to escort Assad from power – including changing Russian and Iranian support for the regime, and possibly even the use of force, rather than looking to international law. To do otherwise will only prolong the suffering of the Syrian people.

Ian Hurd is an associate professor of political science at Northwestern University and the author of After Anarchy: Legitimacy and Power in the UN Security Council (Princeton University Press, 2007), and International Organizations: Politics, Law, Practice (Cambridge, University Press, 2nd ed. 2013).

Follow him on Twitter: @Ian_Hurd

As the Arab League threw its weight behind the allies’ judgment that the Assad regime was responsible for the chemical attack, the US and Britain paved the way for intervention, saying it would be a response to a violation of international law and not aimed at regime change.

General Sir Nick Houghton, chief of the defence staff, will outline a series of arm’s-length options for targeted attacks against Syria during a meeting on Wednesday of the UK’s national security council (NSC) .

Houghton, who is expected to reiterate the military’s misgivings about entering the conflict, is expected to tell ministers the UK could assist US forces with cruise missile strikes launched from submarines, warships and aircraft against targets such as command and control bunkers.

David Cameron announced a recall of parliament on Thursday to allow MPs to formally debate the proposed intervention.

The Commons is expected to endorse military action – with a few rebels on all sides – after Ed Miliband indicated on Tuesday that Labour will reluctantly support the government motion, which will closely refer to international law.

Cameron said any use of chemical weapons was “morally indefensible and completely wrong,” adding that any action taken “would have to be legal, would have to be proportionate. It would have to be specifically to deter the future use of chemical weapons”.

Without spelling out any detailed plans, he signalled limited action. “This is not about getting involved in a Middle Eastern war or changing our stance in Syria or going further into that conflict … it is about chemical weapons. Their use is wrong, and the world shouldn’t stand idly by.”

However, a YouGov survey for the Sun showed that 74% of Britons oppose deploying troops to Syria while 50% oppose attacking with long range missiles from ships. Just 25% are in favour.

Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, warned against a rush to war, saying he feared the consequences could be “beyond description and horrible”.

In a Telegraph interview, the Church of England leader, who visited the region in June, said MPs must be certain of the “facts on the ground” before proceeding and consider the possible ramifications across the wider Arab and Muslim world. “I have had a lot of conversations with people in the region … [there is] just a sense that this a terribly, terribly dangerous time,” he said.

Barack Obama and Cameron discussed the crisis by phone on Tuesday evening. Sources said they discussed the latest thinking but no military decisions were made.

Jo Biden, the US vice-president, has become the most senior member of the Obama administration to blame the Syrian government for the attack.

Addressing a group of veterans in Houston, he said there was “no doubt who was responsible for this heinous use of chemical weapons in Syria: the Syrian regime”.

He added that “those who use chemical weapons against defenceless men, women and children … must be held accountable”.

The next step towards military strikes – which could be launched between late on Thursday, following the vote at Westminster, and the end of the weekend – is expected to be taken on Wednesday when John Kerry, the US secretary of state, releases more information linking the Assad regime to the chemical weapons attack on the Ghouta area east of Damascus.

Kerry is expected to say there is definitive proof linking the regime to the attack on the basis of “open sources” such as evidence from international doctors, a judgment that only the regime could have launched such a large attack, and intercept intelligence of Syrian communications from, among others, the Israelis.

Kerry’s judgment is expected to be followed by a decision by Obama on the exact form of a military strike, which will be designed to deter the future use of chemical weapons by Assad or other regimes.

The White House made clear that the action would not be designed to widen the Syrian conflict or overthrow the regime. Spokesman Jay Carney said: “The options we are considering are not about regime change.” He later added: “There has to be a response to that clear violation of international norms.”

The rest of the international coalition that will either take part in the military action or offer diplomatic support was coming together rapidly on Tuesday night.

In Paris, François Hollande said: “France is ready to punish those who took the decision to gas the innocent.”

France “will not shirk its responsibilities” Hollande told a meeting of French ambassadors. He is due to chair a meeting of his security cabinet on Wednesday, bringing together his ministers of defence, foreign affairs and the interior with France’s top generals, to finalise preparations for the country’s role.

The Arab League meanwhile blamed Assad for the gas attack and voiced regional support for action. After an emergency meeting in Cairo, the league said it held the Syrian government “fully responsible for the ugly crime” and demanded that perpetrators face international trials.”

Iraq, Lebanon and Algeria withheld their support for the statement however, reflecting the largely sectarian fault lines in the Arab world deepened by the Syrian conflict.

In Damascus, the UN inspection of suspected sites of chemical attacks was held up for a day following Monday’s sniper attack on one of the inspectors’ vehicles. A press statement said: “a comprehensive assessment determined that the visit should be postponed by one day in order to improve preparedness and safety for the team.”

The UN investigation in Syria is due to last a further six days according an earlier understanding with the Assad government, though it could be extended by mutual agreement. However, Washington, London and Paris have all made it clear that they would not wait for the UN report to take action based on their own intelligence findings.

Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu made it clear that Israel would not take part in military action but would respond with force if it was the target of Syrian reprisals.

“The state of Israel is prepared for any scenario,” Netanyahu said after talks with his security officials.

Cameron is expected to be able to brief MPs on a joint British, US and French decision on military action when he makes a statement to MPs at 2.30pm on Thursday. This will follow a morning meeting of the full cabinet which is expected to endorse a recommendation from the NSC.

The White House made clear that Obama is gearing up for a military response when it said it was “preposterous” to suggest the Assad regime was not responsible for the attack. UK and US sources say that without a UN security council resolution, the allies need to provide definitive proof of regime involvement to provide legal cover for a military strike.

Carney gave a taste of the Kerry statement when he said: “The regime has already used chemical weapons in this conflict against its own people on a small scale. It has maintained firm control of the stockpiles of chemical weapons in Syria. It has the rockets and the rocket capability that were employed in this chemical weapons attack and it was engaged in an assault against these neighbourhoods prior to the use of chemical weapons and in the aftermath of the use of these chemical weapons. You would have to be credulous indeed to entertain an alternative scenario.”

In a sign that Barack Obama believes he has the legal authority, independently of Congress, to launch a strike, Carney said that allowing the chemical weapons attack to go unanswered would be a “threat to theUnited States“.

The White House indicated that the allies would sidestep the UN afterRussia, which has the power of veto, denounced the gathering momentum towards western armed intervention, predicting it would have disastrous consequences across the region. The deputy prime minister, Dmitry Rogozin, tweeted that the west was behaving towards the Islamic world “like a monkey with a grenade”.

On Tuesday Russia began evacuating its nationals wishing to flee Syria in anticipation of air strikes, providing space on a cargo plane which had been delivering food aid to the Mediterranean city of Latakia.

Carney said the work of weapons inspectors now was Damascus was “redundant” because it has already been established that chemical weapons were used by Syria on a large scale.

He declined to say whether the US Congress would be required to authorise any military strike, or be recalled as has happened in Britain’s parliament, but insisted the White House was consulting with leaders in the House and Senate and communicating with the chairmen of relevant congressional committees.

Legally, the UK and the US indicated they were relying on the Geneva protocol of 1925 which banned the use of chemical weapons after their deployment in the first world war.

Using similar language to Cameron, Nick Clegg said: “If we stand idly by we set a very dangerous precedent indeed where brutal dictators and brutal rulers will feel they can get away with using chemical weapons. What we are considering is a serious response to that. What we are not considering is regime change, trying to topple the Assad regime,[or] trying to settle the civil war in Syria one way or another.”

Miliband indicated that, in the light of the careful wording by the PM and his deputy, Labour could support a government motion. He said: “The use of chemical weapons on innocent civilians is abhorrent and cannot be ignored. When I saw the prime minister this afternoon I said to him the Labour party would consider supporting international action, but only on the basis that it was legal, that it was specifically limited to deterring the future use of chemical weapons and that any action contemplated had clear and achievable military goals. We will be scrutinising any action contemplated on that basis.”

Although the White House has not formally announced it is planning military action, administration officials appear to have been sanctioned to brief on the types of military force being contemplated. Reports citing unnamed figures in the administration indicate the US is contemplating an attack, and are likely to be limited missile or long-range air strikes.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US military, General Martin Dempsey, told Congress last month that even “limited standoff strikes” against Syria would require hundreds of aircraft, ships and submarines and could cost billions of dollars.

While such action would “degrade regime capabilities” and lead to defections, Dempsey told the House Foreign Affairs committee, there was a risk of retaliatory attacks and “collateral damage impacting civilians”. He also warned of “unintended consequences” of any military intervention in the complex civil war.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/27/uk-us-strikes-syrian-regime

Monday 1 April

Bedroom tax introduced

The aim is to tackle overcrowding and encourage a more efficient use of social housing. Working age housing benefit and unemployment claimants deemed to have one spare bedroom in social housing will lose 14% of their housing benefit and those with two or more spare bedrooms will lose 25%. An estimated 1m households with extra bedrooms are paid housing benefit. Critics say it is an inefficient policy as in the north of England, families with a spare rooms outnumber overcrowded families by three to one, so thousands will be hit with the tax when there is no local need for them to move. Two-thirds of the people hit by the bedroom tax are disabled.

Savings: £465m a year. As many as 660,000 people in social housing will lose an average of £728 a year.

Monday 1 April

Thousands lose access to legal aid

Branded by Labour a “day of shame” for the legal aid system, the cutoff to claim legal aid will be a household income of £32,000, and those earning between £14,000 and £32,000 will have to take a means test. Family law cases including divorce, child custody, immigration and employment cases will be badly affected.

Savings: a minimum £350m from £2.2bn legal aid bill.

Monday 1 April

Council tax benefit passes into local control

Council tax benefit, currently a single system administered by the Department for Work and Pensions, is being transferred to local councils with a reduction in funding of 10%. Council tax benefit is claimed by 5.9 million low-income families in the UK. The new onus on councils has come at a time when local government funding, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has fallen by 26.8% in two years in real terms. A Guardian survey of 81 councils last week found many claiming they face difficult cuts, with almost half saying they were reducing spending on care services for adults. This also comes at a time when 2.4m households will see a council tax rise.

Savings: up to £480m a year, but depends on decisions of local councils.

Monday 1 April

NHS commissioning changes for ever

An NHS commissioning board and a total of 211 clinical commissioning groups made up of doctors, nurses and other professionals will take control of budgets to buy services for patients. They will buy from any service providers, including private ones so long as they meet NHS standards and costs. Strategic health authorities and primary care trusts disappear.

Costs: £1.4bn, mainly in redundancies, followed by savings as high as £5bn in 2015 owing to fall in staff numbers.

Monday 1 April

Regulation of financial industry changes

The Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority, housed in the Bank of England, replace the Financial Services Authority. The Bank promises these changes do not represent the death and Easter resurrection of the same body. A new, proactive supervisory approach towards the City is promised, focused on outcomes rather than a tick-box culture. It has powers to prosecute, throw people out of the industry and withdraw a bank’s licence. Above all it monitors risk to the financial system as a whole.

Saturday 6 April

50p tax rate scrapped for high earners

Announced in the 2012 budget. George Osborne said the 50p rate, introduced in April 2010, caused massive distortions in 2010-11 and raised only £1bn, rather than the £2.5bn forecast by Labour back in 2009. HMRC found £16bn was deliberately shifted into the previous tax year, largely by owner/directors of companies taking dividends in the previous year when the highest rate was still 40p. Labour claims 13,000 millionaires will get a £100,000 tax cut.

Monday 8 April

Disability living allowance scrapped

The personal independence payment (PIP) replaces the disability living allowance and, according to the DWP, is not based on your condition, but on how your condition affects you, so narrowing the gateway to the PIP.

It will contain two elements: a daily living component and a mobility component. If you score sufficient points, a claim can be made. Assessments will be face-to-face rather than based on written submissions, starting in Bootle benefits centre, handling claims across the north-west and north-east.

Monday 8 April

Benefit uprating begins

For the first time in history welfare benefits and tax credits will not rise in line with inflation and will instead for the next three years rise by 1%. Had there been no change benefits would have risen by 2.2%. Disability benefits will continue to rise in line with inflation.

Savings: £505m in the first year, rising to £2.3bn in 2015-16. Nearly 9.5 million families will be affected, including 7 million in work, by £165 a year.

Monday 15 April

Welfare benefit cap

The most popular of the welfare reforms will begin on 15 April in the London boroughs of Bromley, Croydon, Enfield and Haringey. The intention is that no welfare claimants will receive in total more than the average annual household income after tax and national insurance – estimated at £26,000. Other councils will start to introduce it from 15 July and it will be fully up and running by the end of September. Some estimate 80,000 households will be made homeless. The DWP says around 7,000 people who would have been affected by the cap have moved into work and a further 22,000 have accepted employment support to move into work. Households where someone is entitled to working tax credits will not be affected.

Savings: £51m over three years.

28 April

Universal credit introduced

The new in- and out-of-work credit, which integrates six of the main out-of-work benefits, will start to be implemented this April in one jobcentre in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester. The aim is to increase incentives to work for the unemployed and to encourage longer hours for those working part-time. It had been intended that four jobcentres would start the trial in April, but this has been delayed until July, and a national programme will start in September for new claimants. They will test the new sanctions regime and a new fortnightly job search trial, which aims to ensure all jobseeker’s allowance and unemployment claimants are automatically signed onto Job Match, an internet-based job-search mechanism. Suspicion remains that the software is not ready.

• This article was amended on 3 April 2013 to correct the number of clinical commissioning boards from 240 to 211.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/mar/31/liberal-conservative-coalition-conservatives

Trade School is an alternative, self-organized school that runs on barter.

‘Bedroom tax’ will force people out of their homes

The government’s attack on benefits could see thousands of people lose their homes. One attack in particular, popularly known as the “bedroom tax”, is set to push almost 100,000 social housing tenants into arrears on their rent from this April.

The idea is to punish people for “under-occupying” homes that are supposedly too large for them. Tenants could lose up to £80 a month from their housing benefit for having spare rooms.

But councils and social housing associations report that they simply don’t have enough one bedroom homes to move people into.

For example in Chester-le-Street in Durham there are 41 one-bedroom properties and 600 people who will be classed as under-occupying.

So when tenants are forced out that pushes them onto the private market, where it gets even harder to find affordable homes.

Recent research by homelessness charity Crisis found that only 1.5 percent of rental homes are affordable to single people on benefits.

It isn’t tenants in social housing who are responsible for the fact there are twice as many bedrooms in Britain as there are people. The real problem is the mansions and second homes of the rich.

And this isn’t the only way housing benefit is under attack. It is being lumped into a new “universal credit” later this year, along with most other working age benefits.

That will mean that unemployed people will face the same harsh conditions to prove they are looking for jobs that aren’t there—subject to sanctions of up to three years.

Cap

And the total will be subject to a cap of £500 per household per week, far less than the rent of a family house in central London.

In all, the government’s own impact risk assessment estimates that 2.8 million people will lose out. Contrary to Tory rhetoric about “making work pay”, the majority of these will be workers—1.3 million of them full time.

But they also include 400,000 of the poorest people in Britain. Some 300,000 households stand to lose more than £300 a month.

Meanwhile MPs are set to vote this week on capping housing benefit rises for private tenants to 1 percent a year, having already broken the link with rent increases.

This means that in, say, the London borough of Islington where rent rises by between 8 and 11 percent every year, in five years the benefits would effectively be cut by almost half.

In reality it would be easy to slash the cost of housing benefit with rent controls on parasitic landlords—helping to ease the housing crisis instead of making it worse.

This is usually dismissed out of hand as impossible, but some leases that began before 1989 still have their rent regulation to “fair” increases. By now they are sometimes less than a quarter of the current market rent.

The current benefit reforms have nothing to do with taming Britain’s housing crisis—and everything to do with making it worse in the hope of scapegoating the poorest in society.

‘There just aren’t any one bedroom flats’

Liz Kitching from Hands Off Our Homes in Leeds explains how tenants are organising against the bedroom tax

From April I’ll have to find an extra £70 a month to stay in my two bedroom flat. I’m very worried about it, and I’m not the only one.

The fact is that there just aren’t any one bed flats for people like me to move into. You might want a one bed, but all they give you is two.

I’ve applied for a one bedroom flat and I look every day—there are none. If you’re forced to move out of social housing into private rental, even for a smaller flat the rent could be higher.

In Leeds lots of people will find themselves are in arrears. There are high-rise flats in the city centre, where the council has a policy of not putting families so it’s mostly single people, or couples over 50.

They are spacious flats, which is why the private sector is keen to get its hands on them. Most of those tenants will be classed as under-occupying.

One woman in the flats told us she’d had a council officer and a police support officer come around and asked were what she planned to do about under-occupying. She nearly had a nervous breakdown!

So we decided to relaunch the Hands Off Our Homes campaign we’d previously used to fight privatisation. We’ve held stalls in the city centre and all around the council estates and they’ve gone down so well.

Loads of people have been signing our petition, getting angry and talking politics. We’re building for a big public meeting. I say—bring it on.

Council tax benefit cut

The government plans to cut what it spends on council tax benefit by 10 percent in April. But it has left the decision on how to implement the cut to individual councils.

Britain’s largest council, in Birmingham, was expected to announce a cut of 20 percent for most tenants on Monday of this week.

Evictions on the increase

Nearly 200,000 households in Britain were threatened with eviction over the past year—the equivalent of a city the size of Liverpool or Bristol—according to the housing charity Shelter.

The worst hotspots are the east London boroughs of Newham and Barking and Dagenham, where more than one in 40 households are at risk.

Half of pay spent on rent

One in three private tenants now spend more than half of their take-home pay on rent. In London it’s even worse, with one in six paying some 60 percent of their net income on rent.

Bungling Tories can’t do sums

Most of these attacks are scheduled to take place in April, but the new universal credit benefit has already been put back to October in most of the country.

One reason is that combining so much information about people in one place has turned out to be too much of an IT challenge.

Treasury secretary David Gauke admitted that in tests in November, more than a quarter of people’s data still didn’t match up.

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=30274

Hundreds join Liverpool bedroom tax protest

The protest was organised by Stand Up In Bootle, which is part of umbrella group Liverpool Against the Cuts. Protestors gathered outside the offices of One Vision Housing in Bootle before marching to a Sefton Council one stop shop.

Campaigners called on the government to drop the bedroom tax and for housing associations and councils to refuse to implement it.

Several protestors who spoke to Inside Housing at the demonstration also said they would refuse to pay their rent in protest at the tax when payment of benefit is switched direct to tenants.

Ritchie Jones, of  Stand Up In Bootle, said: ‘People here are established in the community, there are lots of disabled and vulnerable people who are affected but have nowhere to move to.’

The protest is the biggest demonstration so far against the bedroom tax, under which social housing tenants of working age are deducted housing benefit if they have spare rooms. Left-wing thinktank Labour Left is organising a day of action on 16 March and is hoping to arrange demonstrations in 16 cities across Great Britain.

The policy comes into affect from 1 April and will affect an estimated 660,000 people of which 420,000 are disabled.

http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/tenancies/hundreds-join-liverpool-bedroom-tax-protest/6525974.article

Here you can read more about the tax: http://www.lbbd.gov.uk/AdviceBenefitsAndEmergencies/HousingBenefit/Pages/HBChanges2013FAQs.aspx

Clearly, the government has bought into the notion that too big to fail is too big to jail. When prosecutors choose not to prosecute to the full extent of the law in a case as egregious as this, the law itself is diminished. The deterrence that comes from the threat of criminal prosecution is weakened, if not lost.

In the HSBC case, prosecutors may want the public to focus on the $1.92 billion settlement, which includes forfeiture of $1.26 billion and other penalties, as well as requirements to improve its internal controls and submit to the oversight of an outside monitor for the next five years. But even large financial settlements are small compared with the size of international major banks. More important, once criminal sanctions are considered off limits, penalties and forfeitures become just another cost of doing business, a risk factor to consider on the road to profits.

There is no doubt that the wrongdoing at HSBC was serious and pervasive. Several foreign banks have been fined in recent years for flouting United States sanctions against transferring money through American subsidiaries on behalf of clients in countries like Iran, Sudan and Cuba. HSBC’s actions were even more egregious. According to several law enforcement officials with knowledge of the inquiry, prosecutors found that, for years, HSBC had also moved tainted money from Mexican drug cartels and Saudi banks with ties to terrorist groups.

Those findings echo those of a Congressional report, issued in July, which said that between 2001 and 2010, HSBC exposed the American “financial system to money laundering and terrorist financing risks.” Prosecutors and Congressional investigators were also alarmed by indications that senior HSBC officials might have been complicit in the illegal activity and that the bank did not tighten its lax controls against money laundering even after repeated urgings from federal officials.

Yet government officials will argue that it is counterproductive to levy punishment so severe that a bank could be destroyed in the process. That may be true as far as it goes. But if banks operating at the center of the global economy cannot be held fully accountable, the solution is to reduce their size by breaking them up and restricting their activities — not shield them and their leaders from prosecution for illegal activities.