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      in UK Politics

      Government to blame for gas crisis, says industry chief who warns of winter ‘shutdown’

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      High gas prices will continue throughout winter and UK industry could be forced to “shut down” if supplies run out, the founder of the manufacturing giant Ineos has warned.Sir Jim Ratcliffe blamed the government for a lack of gas storage – warning that a sharp winter could lead to a widespread factory closures as demand outstrips supply.Appearing on ITV’s Peston, he was asked if the country could shut down due to a prolonged cold spell, he replied: “Yeah, in which case then, what you would do is you’d shut down industry.”Asked who was to blame for the gas shortage, Sir Jim said: “That’s [the] government. That’s a strategic issue for energy supplies in the UK – you need some storage, and we’ve got 10 days.”The Brexit-backing industrialist added: “I think it’s quite difficult to predict how long this sort of current situation’s going to last … I suppose if you were a betting man you’d assume it would probably run through at least through the winter because obviously our gas demand increases in the winter.”It comes as chancellor Rishi Sunak appeared to play down the level of support the government can provide for soaring gas costs – saying “it’s not the government’s job” to manage prices.Speaking in Washington after attending a G7 finance ministers, Sunak said: “We’re prepared to work with business and support them as required.”The chancellor added: “But in general I believe in a market economy, as it’s served us very well in this country. It’s not the government’s job to come in and start managing the price of every individual product.”Sunak is set to apply tough “value for money” tests to any financial support given to the steel sector and other major energy users, according to the Financial Times.Urging the government to provide short-term subsidies, major manufacturers, such as steel and chemical makers, have warned they may have to shut down plants this winter if energy levels continue to be high.Energy experts have also warned that a harsh winter could force the UK to restrict business’ energy supplies – shutting down factories in a throw-back to the three-day week of the 1970s.Sir Jim urged Sunak to provide enough support to make sure “the UK economy can’t be held to ransom because we haven’t organised our gas situation very well”.The UK has 10 days’ of storage, the Ineos founder said – labelling that figure “a bit pathetic really for a nation as important as the UK” given countries on the continent have four or five times that amount.“Four years ago when we had the, if you remember, the Beast From The East, we were within a day or two of running out of gas in the UK,” said Sir Jim.“If we had run out of gas it would have been a disaster for, you know, the older people who wouldn’t have been able to get heating in the house, for industry which would have had to shut down. But we were within days, and we did make that point.”Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the government should “come out of hiding” and work with business on the issue. “They’ve put their out-of-office on. Whilst other countries step up and act, the UK is staggeringly complacently sitting back.”The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said ministers and officials were engaging with industry “to further understand and to help mitigate the impacts of high global gas prices”.It comes as two more of the UK’s domestic suppliers collapsed. Colorado Energy and BP-backed Pure Planet were latest of the 11 suppliers to have folded since the beginning of September.Meanwhile, Sunak insisted that here will be a “good amount of Christmas presents available” this year despite the ongoing supply chain crisis.A build-up of cargo in Felixstowe has led to shipping company Maersk opting to divert vessels away from the Suffolk port, while similar logjams have been seen elsewhere in the world including in the US.“We’re doing absolutely everything we can to mitigate some of these challenges,” said Sunak. “They are global in nature so we can’t fix every single problem but I feel confident there will be good provision of goods for everybody.”It comes as the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and 41 other trade groups have urged Sunak to slash business rates and make fundamental changes to the system.Labour’s shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves also called for reform, saying the system is no longer fit for purpose. “It penalises high-street shops in favour of online giants and deters businesses from investing in new green technologies,” she said. More

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      in US Politics

      Is America experiencing an unofficial general strike? | Robert Reich

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      OpinionUS newsIs America experiencing an unofficial general strike?Robert ReichAcross the country, people are refusing to return to backbreaking or mind-numbing low-wage jobs Wed 13 Oct 2021 06.16 EDTLast modified on Wed 13 Oct 2021 06.18 EDTLast Friday’s jobs report from the US Department of Labor elicited a barrage of gloomy headlines. The New York Times emphasized “weak” jobs growth and fretted that “hiring challenges that have bedeviled employers all year won’t be quickly resolved,” and “rising wages could add to concerns about inflation.” For CNN, it was “another disappointment”. For Bloomberg the “September jobs report misses big for a second straight month”.‘I have never felt so hopeless’: millions in US fear utility shutoffs as debts riseRead moreThe media failed to report the big story, which is actually a very good one: American workers are now flexing their muscles for the first time in decades.You might say workers have declared a national general strike until they get better pay and improved working conditions.No one calls it a general strike. But in its own disorganized way it’s related to the organized strikes breaking out across the land – Hollywood TV and film crews, John Deere workers, Alabama coal miners, Nabisco workers, Kellogg workers, nurses in California, healthcare workers in Buffalo.Disorganized or organized, American workers now have bargaining leverage to do better. After a year and a half of the pandemic, consumers have pent-up demand for all sorts of goods and services.But employers are finding it hard to fill positions.Last Friday’s jobs report showed the number of job openings at a record high. The share of people working or actively looking for work (the labor force participation rate) has dropped to 61.6%. Participation for people in their prime working years, defined as 25 to 54 years old, is also down.Over the past year, job openings have increased 62%. Yet overall hiring has actually declined.What gives?Another clue: Americans are also quitting their jobs at the highest rate on record. The Department of Labor reported on Tuesday that some 4.3 million people quit their jobs in August. That comes to about 2.9% of the workforce – up from the previous record set in April, of about 4 million people quitting.All told, about 4 million American workers have been leaving their jobs every month since the spring.These numbers have nothing to do with the Republican bogeyman of extra unemployment benefits supposedly discouraging people from working. Reminder: the extra benefits ran out on Labor Day.Renewed fears of the Delta variant of Covid may play some role. But it can’t be the largest factor. With most adults now vaccinated, rates of hospitalizations and deaths are way down.My take: workers are reluctant to return to or remain in their old jobs mostly because they’re burned out.Some have retired early. Others have found ways to make ends meet other than remain in jobs they abhor. Many just don’t want to return to backbreaking or mind-numbing low-wage shit jobs.The media and most economists measure the economy’s success by the number of jobs it creates, while ignoring the quality of those jobs. That’s a huge oversight.Years ago, when I was secretary of labor, I kept meeting working people all over the country who had full-time work but complained that their jobs paid too little and had few benefits, or were unsafe, or required lengthy or unpredictable hours. Many said their employers treated them badly, harassed them, and did not respect them.Since then, these complaints have only grown louder, according to polls. For many, the pandemic was the last straw. Workers are fed up, wiped out, done-in, and run down. In the wake of so much hardship, illness and death during the past year, they’re not going to take it anymore.In order to lure workers back, employers are raising wages and offering other inducements. Average earnings rose 19 cents an hour in September and are up more than $1 an hour – or 4.6% – over the last year.Clearly, that’s not enough.Corporate America wants to frame this as a “labor shortage.” Wrong. What’s really going on is more accurately described as a living-wage shortage, a hazard pay shortage, a childcare shortage, a paid sick leave shortage, and a healthcare shortage.Unless these shortages are rectified, many Americans won’t return to work anytime soon. I say it’s about time.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsUS newsOpinionUS economyEconomicsUS politicscommentReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      House passes bill to raise US debt ceiling through early December

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      US CongressHouse passes bill to raise US debt ceiling through early DecemberLegislation raises government’s borrowing limit to $28.9tnHard-fought House vote passes entirely along party lines Guardian staff and agenciesTue 12 Oct 2021 19.57 EDTLast modified on Tue 12 Oct 2021 21.57 EDTThe US House of Representatives gave final approval on Tuesday to a Senate-passed bill temporarily raising the government’s borrowing limit to $28.9tn, putting off the risk of default at least until early December.Kamala Harris: European colonizers ‘ushered in wave of devastation for tribal nations’Read moreDemocrats, who narrowly control the House, maintained party discipline to pass the hard-fought, $480bn debt limit increase. The vote was along party lines, with every yes from Democrats and every no from Republicans.Joe Biden is expected to sign the measure into law this week, before 18 October, when the treasury department has estimated it would no longer be able to pay the nation’s debts without congressional action.Republicans insist Democrats should take responsibility for raising the debt limit because they want to spend trillions of dollars to expand social programs and tackle climate change. Democrats say the increased borrowing authority is needed largely to cover the cost of tax cuts and spending programs during Donald Trump’s administration, which House Republicans supported.House passage warded off concerns that the world’s largest economy would go into default for the first time, but only for about seven weeks, setting the stage for continued fighting between the parties.The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell wrote to Biden on Friday that he would not work with Democrats on another debt limit increase. McConnell was harshly criticized by Trump, the Republican party’s leader, after the Senate vote.Lawmakers also have only until 3 December to pass spending legislation to prevent a government shutdown.The Senate’s vote last week to raise the limit – which had been more routine before the current era of fierce partisanship – turned into a brawl. Republicans tried to link the measure to Biden’s goal of passing multitrillion-dollar legislation to bolster infrastructure and social services while fighting climate change.At a news conference on Tuesday, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said she was optimistic that Democrats could work out changes to reduce the cost of their social policy plans “in a timely fashion”.In another sign compromise was possible, progressive Democrats told reporters that most of them wanted to keep all the proposed programs in the multitrillion-dollar plan, while shortening the time period to cut its overall cost.Biden has suggested a range of more like $2tn rather than the initial $3.5tn target. At a briefing today, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, told reporters: “We are at a point where there are choices that need to be made, given that there are fewer dollars that will be spent.”Psaki said that the conversations are ongoing between White House senior staff and the president as well as key Democrats such as senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona about how to trim the bill and what a smaller package would look like.Psaki was asked if the president supported Pelosi’s strategy for the “Build Back Better” bill outlined in a letter she sent to caucus members on Monday, passing a bill with fewer programs that will receive more funding. Though she wouldn’t confirm if the president supported that specific strategy, Psaki noted that the bill would be smaller versus the $3.5tn Biden originally proposed and referred to comments Pelosi made during her press conference.“What [Pelosi] said in that press conference is that ‘if there are fewer dollars to be spent, there are choices that need to be made’, and the president agrees … If it’s smaller than $3.5tn, which we know it will be, then there are choices that need to be made,” said Psaki.“A bill that doesn’t pass means nothing changes,” Psaki said.Gloria Oladipo contributed reportingTopicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsUS economyEconomicsnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Surprised that Ivanka was almost head of the World Bank? You shouldn’t be | Arwa Mahdawi

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      OpinionIvanka TrumpSurprised that Ivanka Trump was almost head of the World Bank? You shouldn’t beArwa MahdawiDonald Trump wanting his daughter to have the top job at the World Bank is no great surprise. What intrigues me is the thought of Steven Mnuchin blocking it Tue 12 Oct 2021 11.34 EDTLast modified on Tue 12 Oct 2021 14.01 EDTIt’s no secret that Donald Trump has something of a soft spot for his eldest daughter, Ivanka. He’s constantly tooting her horn and gushing over her talents. Not only does Ivanka have a “very nice figure”, Trump has boasted, but “she’s very good with numbers”. She’s so good at all that numbers stuff that the former president even considered her for the top job at the World Bank in 2019. And that wasn’t just a fleeting fantasy, either; according to a recent report by the Intercept, Ivanka’s nomination for World Bank president “came incredibly close to happening”. The reason it didn’t is that Trump’s treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, intervened. Which, by the way is a rather different story from the one Ivanka tells. The former first daughter has said she passed on the job because she was very happy with the high-powered White House position she’d appointed herself to.I can’t say I’m surprised that Ivanka was a stone’s throw away from a(nother) prestigious job she was laughably unqualified for. What does intrigue me is why Mnuchin might have blocked her nomination. Trump has a knack of surrounding himself with sycophants who do his bidding; what could have prompted Mnuchin to break ranks? Could it possibly be that the guy finds brazen nepotism distasteful? Alas, it seems unlikely, considering he’s a product of it himself. Mnuchin’s first job out of Yale was at Goldman Sachs, where his dad just happened to be a general partner. According to a New York magazine profile, Mnuchin’s colleagues at Goldman Sachs didn’t consider him “especially book smart”, but that didn’t stop him becoming partner himself. The same profile notes that his elevation to partner came at the expense of an African American trader from a working-class background who struck one colleague as being “much smarter than Steven” and having “accomplished a lot more”. I don’t know how fair that profile is, but I’d bet both my kidneys that Mnuchin isn’t someone who stays awake at night fretting about nepotism.So perhaps Mnuchin was afraid Ivanka’s appointment might be unethical or make the US look ridiculous? Again, these theories seem unlikely. Mnuchin and his (third) wife, the Scottish actor Louise Linton, don’t seem particularly bothered by ethics or looking ridiculous. Mnuchin, after all, is nicknamed the “foreclosure king” because he made a ton of money evicting elderly people from their homes. Linton, meanwhile, is notorious for having written a “white saviour” memoir full of dubious claims. The pair haven’t exactly kept a low profile since getting together. Remember when the lovebirds did a very weird supervillain-style photoshoot with a sheet of new dollar bills? Not exactly something someone concerned about optics might do. Then there was the time they took a government plane to see a solar eclipse in Kentucky. Linton posted the trip on Instagram and hashtagged all the designer labels she was wearing: “#rolandmouret pants”, “#tomford sunnies”, “#hermesscarf”, “#valentinorockstudheels”. The whole thing was #inverybadtaste.The pair haven’t exactly tried to tone it down since then. Linton recently made a movie called Me You Madness where she plays a “materialistic, narcissistic, self-absorbed misanthrope” who hates commercial air travel, loves high fashion and eats men for fun. It also contains spider sex. Mnuchin has been very supportive of the movie, calling the escapades of a greedy sociopath “highly entertaining”. Again, he doesn’t seem like the sort of guy who cares what other people think. Rather, he seems like the sort of guy who actively supports narcissistic blonds (Linton looks quite a bit like Ivanka) with white saviour complexes and enormous egos doing whatever the hell they like. If he blocked Ivanka’s nomination then I’ll once again wager my kidneys that it wasn’t for the common good, but it was somehow for his own good. After all, nepotism simply isn’t a problem for people like Mnuchin. It’s just the way the world works.
      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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      in UK Politics

      Boris Johnson calls inflation fears ‘unfounded’ but economists disagree

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      Economists and the head of the UK’s energy regulator have thrown doubt on Boris Johnson’s assertion that inflation fears are “unfounded”. The prime minister played down concerns about price rises and the cost of living in a range of TV interviews on Tuesday, the day before univeral credit – a major pillar of the social benefits system – is due to be cut by £20 per week. His remarks came as gas prices breached £3 per therm in the UK for the first time, while also climbing across Europe. Tuesday’s rise now means prices have tripled in the last two months and broader measures of the cost of living are also rising sharply.  Consumer prices rose 3 per cent in the 12 months to August, while the Bank of England expects inflation to reach 4 per cent by the end of the year, potentially outstripping what experts at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) believe is the best guess at true pay growth of between 3.2-4.4 per cent.The prime minister told Sky News that supply pressures and rising costs were symptomatic of the global economy “coming back to life very rapidly” after the Covid-19 pandemic.“People have been worrying about inflation for a very long time, I am looking at robust economic growth, and by the way, those fears have been unfounded,” he said, adding: “Supply will meet demand.” However, his remarks flew in the face of analysis from economists across the political spectrum, and the head of the UK’s energy regulator, Ofgem. Chief among concerns shared by economists and interest rate setter the Bank of England is that prices are rising while economic growth shows some signs of stalling. Measures of wage growth which appear to show an uptick in pay, and which the prime minister has repeatedly used to justify a hard line of immigration post-Brexit, have been distorted by the pandemic, according to independent experts at the ONS. They argue that they do not show wage growth which is as robust as the prime minister’s choice use of some figures suggests. This paints a falsely positive picture due to the slump in pay earlier in the pandemic and limits on how to measure pay rolls amid furlough and sudden lockdowns.“The public policy discussion this week has lost all touch with reality,” tweeted Torsten Bell, head of think tank the Resolution Foundation. This was because while wages in a few sectors had risen, price rises were taking hold across the economic spectrum, creating a cost-of-living squeeze, he added. Meanwhile Ofgem’s chief executive told the Scottish parliament that soaring natural gas prices will be “pretty difficult” for customers to contend with. The effect would last through this winter and beyond, he told MSPs.Energy bills for 15 million households were set to increase by at least £139 under the price cap introduced at the start of October, as suppliers grapple with soaring wholesale prices following the collapse of many smaller firms. For those consumers on prepayment meters, average prices will rise by £153.Natural gas prices have climbed sharply this year, adding to pressure on energy suppliers who may not have hedged their entire portfolio of customers, by locking in fuel prices ahead of time and forcing some out of business.Ofgem’s CEO, Jonathan Brearley, told Holyrood’s energy committee that “unprecedented changes” in the gas prices “were putting strain on the wholesale market”, but he argued that the price cap was still offering customers good value for money.Mr Brearley added that “a series of factors internationally” were “constraining supply”. He said: “It looks like there is little over and above long-term contracts coming from Russia and equally there are some issues with some of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals – all of which means supply is constrained and demand is higher than you’d expect.“In terms of duration, it is very, very hard to tell and our view is we need to be open-minded about how long it might last, and for a range of scenarios.”Meanwhile hopes among some analysts that Russia might increase its gas supply to Europe in order to ease the pressures on supply going into winter, at a time of depleted reserves in the UK and continental Europe, appeared misplaced.Russian leader Vladimir Putin said that the supply crunch in Europe and beyond was the result of “unbalanced decisions” and “drastic steps” in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, according to a report by the Reuters news agency. “You see what is happening in Europe. There is hysteria and some confusion in the markets. Why? Because no one is taking it seriously,” he said.“Some people are speculating on climate change issues, some people are underestimating some things, some are starting to cut back on investments in the extractive industries. There needs to be a smooth transition.” More