BREAKING: Discover How A Slacker Makes $100,000 A Year!

WEBMASTERS! Get Your Website To The Top Of Google

Government to miss poverty targets

Monday, March 3rd, 2008

THE UK Government is set to miss its target of halving the number of children living in poverty by around one million, MPs warn today.

The Commons Work and Pensions Committee said that it was still possible to turn the situation around before the target date of 2010 – but only if ministers were prepared to make more resources available.

The target to halve child poverty – with a view to eradicating it completely by 2020 – was first announced by then prime minister Tony Blair in 1999, when the number of children living in poverty stood at 3.4 million.

Since then the number has fallen by 600,000 to 2.8 million – still well short of the goal of 1.7 million.

On current trends, the committee said that the Government will miss the target by about 1 million – or 1.5 million if housing costs are taken into account.

“We believe the 2010 target could be met, but only if further investment is forthcoming,” it said.

The committee pointed to the way some groups of children had a much higher risk of growing up in poverty, such as those who were disabled or had a disabled parent.

It was “particularly concerned” that one-in-five families with a disabled child were so hard up they had to cut back on food.

Poverty rates among Pakistani and Bangladeshi children were twice those among white children, while black children also experienced higher rates of poverty than whites. The rates were particularly high in London.

The committee endorsed the Government’s strategy of lifting families out of poverty by helping parents find “sustainable” work.

However it expressed concern that the Jobseekers Allowance was too inflexible to cope with the “complexity” of many lone parents’ lives, particularly those with disabled children.

It also urged the Government to do more to change public attitudes towards poverty at a time when sympathy for the poor was at a “low level”.

“Many assume that poverty is only a problem in developing countries and the UK’s economic success means that if someone is poor it must be due to their own poor choices or personal failings,” it said.

“The Government needs to take a lead on challenging these misconceptions.”

Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell said that the Government had made significant progress, but acknowledged that more needed to be done.

Have Your Say: Government to miss poverty targets
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

NO STRAIN NO GAIN

Monday, March 3rd, 2008

SchNEWS looks at how corporations and governments are limiting and controlling the varieties of crops grown…

Last week, in France, the independent seed-saving and selling Association Kokopelli were fined €35,000 after being taken to court by corporate seed merchant Baumaux. Their crime was selling traditional and rare seed varieties which weren’t on the official EU-approved list – and, therefore, illegal to sell – thus giving them an ‘unfair trading advantage’. As the European Commission met this week to prepare new legislation for seed control, due in 2009, which will further restrict the geographic movement and range of crop varieties, this ruling will set a dangerous precedent.

Kokopelli, the non-profit French group set up in 1999 to safeguard endangered seed strains, may be driven out of existence by the fine. Their focus is biodiversity, food security, and the development of sustainable organic agriculture and seed networks in the ‘global south’. They have created one of the largest independent collections in Europe – with over 2500 sorts of vegetable, flower and cereals. Other non-government seedbanks are held by large agro-industrial companies like Limagrain, Syngenta and Pioneer – and guess what their main interest is money rather than starving subsistence farmers.

You may think that in an era of mass extinction it would be a no-brainer that we need to protect biodiversity and the heritage of the crop varieties which have been build up over centuries… but no. Since the 1970s, laws in the UK and Europe mean that to sell seeds, the strain needs to be registered – and everything else becomes ‘outlaw’ seeds, illegal to sell. In the UK it costs £300 per year to maintain the registration and £2000 to register a ‘new’ one – which all disadvantages smaller organisations.

Garden Organic in the UK run a Heritage Seed Library (www.organicgardening.org.uk/hsl), and they get around the law by not selling ‘outlaw’ seeds, but getting individual gardeners to become ‘seed guardians’ who pass around seeds for free to other members of the Library. Unlike other seedbanks, seeds are not kept in cold storage, but are living species which are continually grown and allowed to adapt to new environmental factors.

Another law-busting approach is seed swaps – which in recent years have sprouted up and down the country. People freely share seeds for another year’s growing – a co-operative way of maintaining genetic diversity. Most are around February - see www.seedysunday.org for the remaining events this year.

DIGGING THE DIRT

There’s so many types of potato – why not just use the best ones and forget the rest? Seed varieties which have been developed over the centuries have adapted to environments, and the genepool has to survive unforeseen factors such as pests and diseases – or climate change. The Irish potato famine was caused by an over-reliance on blight afflicted spuds, or, to take another example, a variety of cauliflower grown in Cornwall was abandoned in the 1940s for a French cauli which gave a higher yield, but turned out to be vulnerable to fungal ringspot – but the old ringspot-resistant Cornish type is now extinct.

Limiting the varieties means limiting the genetic base – presumably to leave GM technology in the clear as the only option.

While mass extinctions are taking place in natural ecosystems, the same has taken place in domesticated seeds. Today there are only half a dozen apple types grown in the UK, down from 2,000 a century ago. Over 90% of crop types listed in the US have been lost in 80 years, and China now grows fifty types of rice, down from 8,000 just twenty years ago. The whole human population is supported by just 30 main crop varieties – a recipe for disaster.

LIFE INC.

Originally laws regarding seeds were brought in during the 1920s – mostly to regulate quality and make sure they did what they said on the tin, and not disease ridden, full of stray weed seed or stones. At the time these laws were a good thing but guess what! It’s all been twisted around and now companies use these and subsequent laws to get control of the market. By cutting out the independent networks of farmers, gardeners, and independent seed-sellers - on a worldwide scale - ten companies now control two-thirds of seed distribution. And which companies are we talking about? It’s yer bio-tech giants like Monsanto and Syngenta. Unsurprisingly governments around the world are building up the legal framework to support these firms.

When you register a seed type, potentially anyone growing it is liable to pay you royalties – making ‘intellectual property’ out of plants which have evolved over thousands of years. These companies take an interest in the myriad of varieties with a view to splicing genetic traits into other types, and take out patents on the genetic content. Monsanto have a European patent on a type of wheat which is derived from a traditional Indian one, the sort used to make chapatis.

These same companies are narrowing the market down to the few mono-culture crops they are flogging, reducing diversity. Once farmers limit theirs to these few types – often hybrids which produce defective seeds – they are forced to return to ‘the man’ to buy next year’s seed rather than being able to save and use last year’s. This is the next thing down from the prospect of ‘terminator’ seeds – genetically modified to be sterile, and deliberately unable to supply future yields (See SchNEWS 557).

The farmers were in a far stronger position with their traditional varieties which were open-pollinated, carrying a wider genepool, and better able to adapt to new conditions and diseases.

SEWING WILD OATS

Seeds – and ultimately the control over production of food - becomes another front in which communities and individual farmers across the world have to fight against the forces of neoliberalism and corporatisation.

Via Campesino – the international peasants movement – held a gathering last weekend in Austria, bringing together small farmers from sixteen countries on ‘food and power’. They are increasing networking and solidarity amongst farmers across the world both to protect biodiversity and increase the sharing of crop choices and farming techniques. And it’s not just the corporations and large-scale agro-industry they are up against – due to climate change they are being forced to adapt quickly to new environmental factors and more than ever need to pool knowledge and resources.

For more see www.viacampesina.org

JUDGEMENT DAY

But don’t fret – whatever catastrophe, armageddon or ecocide befalls us, measures are at hand to make sure that if we survive a nuclear winter or total desertification, we’ll be able to recreate a bucolic paradise: This Tuesday (26th), Norway opened the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the island of Spitsbergen in the Arctic circle. The vault is over 500 feet inside a mountain, and 130 metres above sea-level – in case the polar ice caps melt. Seeds are stored at below -20 degrees in moisture free packs and it is claimed that many will last a hundred years – longer for some cereals. Maybe after all the cyborg mutant terminator seeds have all long since sprouted legs and run off into the sunset, the traditional common-or-garden varieties will be the ones saying, “I’ll be back”.

* See www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault
* For more about Kokopelli see www.kokopelli-seeds.com

Have Your Say: NO STRAIN NO GAIN
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Lib Dem leader defends civil liberties

Monday, March 3rd, 2008

Nicol Stephen told the Scottish Liberal Democrat conference at the weekend that they must hold hard to the defining liberal issue of civil liberties.

Labour threatened to erode these through detention without trial, DNA databases, ID cards, biometrics, CCTV and stop-and-search powers, he told delegates in Aviemore.He said: “Our approach is founded on a fundamental principle that the rights of the individual are central to the freedoms and liberties that many Liberals have fought and died for over centuries of campaigning.”

He pointed to Labour’s attempts to push through laws allowing retention of the DNA of innocent people of all ages, and plans to link the planned ID card to students’ ability to secure a loan.

He said he had asked Alistair Carmichael at Westminster to head up a new “stop and search” LibDem hit squad to stop and search all new legislation that seeks to sneak through anything that further erodes civil liberties.

Have Your Say: Lib Dem leader defends civil liberties
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

‘POLICE SHOULD TAKE DNA OF ALL BABIES’

Monday, March 3rd, 2008

BY SHAUN JEPSON

A Former Derbyshire Deputy Chief Constable, who established the national DNA police database, believes genetic samples should be taken from everyone at birth.

Don Dovaston, pictured, also said that immigrants should have their DNA recorded.

He believes the benefits of a universal database far outweigh any human rights issues. Mr Dovaston said not only did a database give police a better chance of catching criminals, but it also helped to clear innocent people who might be suspected of a crime.

But Mr Dovaston, who has 40 years’ police service, said that there would need to be a serious discussion in Government before such measures were put in place.

He said: “I think the benefits of a universal database far outweigh any issues surrounding human rights and my personal opinion is that DNA should be taken from people from birth. I do not see the problem but I understand there has to be serious discussion in Government before it could take place.”

Have Your Say: ‘POLICE SHOULD TAKE DNA OF ALL BABIES’
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

UN rights chief urges probe into Gaza killings

Monday, March 3rd, 2008

APP

The top UN human rights official, reacting to the recent violence between Israel and the Palestinians,has called for an investigation into the reported killing of dozens of civilians, including children, in Gaza by Israeli military.

While recognizing Israel’s right to defend itself, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour condemned the Israeli Defence Force’s “disproportionate use of force,” in a statement issued today in Geneva, which was also distributed at UN Headquarters in New York.

“Israel, as the occupying power, bears a particular responsibility under international human rights and humanitarian law to protect the civilian population and civilian installations in Gaza,” the statement added.

She called on the Israeli Government “to conduct impartial investigations into the killings of civilians, make the findings public and hold any perpetrators accountable.”

Ms. Arbour also strongly condemned the rocket attacks by Palestinian militants against Israeli civilian targets, stressing that they are in clear violation of international humanitarian law and “those responsible must be held to account.”

The UN estimates that at least 59 Palestinians including 39 civilians were killed last Saturday in Gaza and hundreds more injured. In addition, two Israeli soldiers are reported to have been killed in the fighting and an Israeli civilian was killed in Sderot following a rocket attack and at least five other civilians were injured in Ashkelon.

Both Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council which met in emergency session over the weekend have condemned the escalating violence in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel.

Have Your Say: UN rights chief urges probe into Gaza killings
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

VIDEO: Ben Griffin Speaks Before Being Gagged

Monday, March 3rd, 2008

Ben Griffin speaks to World Against War rally before being gagged by UK Government

Stop the War

“As of 1940hrs 29/02/08 I have been placed under an injunction preventing me from speaking publicly and publishing material gained as a result of my service in UKSF (SAS).

I will be continuing to collect evidence and opinion on British Involvement in extraordinary rendition, torture, secret detentions, extra judicial detention, use of evidence gained through torture, breaches of the Geneva Conventions, breaches of International Law and failure to abide by our obligations as per UN Convention Against Torture. I am carrying on regardless ”
Ben Griffin, Former UK Special forces trooper

Ben Griffin, the ex-SAS trooper who this week revealed the extensive British collaboration with US rendition and torture, was served with an injunction immediately after speaking at the London World Against War rally last night. The government is trying to gag Ben to prevent any more revelations about British involvement in the US policy of kidnapping people and sending them to secret centres for interrogation and torture.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb50-ouA-IA[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-yMPUQJez4[/youtube]

Have Your Say: VIDEO: Ben Griffin Speaks Before Being Gagged
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Anti-EU protesters climb crane near Parliament

Monday, March 3rd, 2008

Demonstrators on top of a crane in Parliament Square

Have Your Say: Anti-EU protesters climb crane near Parliament
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Related News

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Political News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Translate: