Tag: northern europe

Europe could dodge a recession. But the UK is in a mess | CNN Business

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Business activity across the 20 countries that use the euro expanded in January for the first time in six months, according to data published Tuesday, providing fresh evidence that Europe’s economy could confound expectations and dodge a recession this year.

An initial reading of the eurozone’s Purchasing Managers’ Index, which tracks activity in the manufacturing and service sectors, rose to 50.2 in January from 49.3 in December, indicating the first expansion since June. A reading above 50 represents growth.

The return to modest growth was helped by falling energy prices and an easing of supply chain stress, which helped temper rising input costs for producers.

The uptick was accompanied by a sharp improvement in optimism about the year ahead, as the recent reopening of China’s economy following the lifting of Covid restrictions helped push confidence to its highest level since last May. Growing optimism in Europe that China’s consumers will start spending again was reflected in Swiss watch maker Swatch

(SWGAF)’s prediction Tuesday of record sales for 2023.

“A steadying of the eurozone economy at the start of the year adds to evidence that the region might escape recession,” said Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, the company that publishes the survey of executives at private sector companies.

Williamson added, however, that a “renewed slide into contraction” should not be ruled out as borrowing costs rise off the back of interest rate hikes by the European Central Bank. But any downturn “is likely to be far less severe than previously feared,” he said.

Berenberg chief economist Holger Schmieding said in a research note that “the still-low level of consumer confidence and the lagged impact of ECB rate hikes still point to a slight contraction in eurozone GDP near-term before the recovery can start to take hold.”

Consumer sentiment in Germany, the region’s biggest economy, looks set to improve for a fourth consecutive month in February from a very low base, according to a separate survey published by GfK Tuesday.

The picture looks far less promising in the United Kingdom, however, where January’s PMI survey showed the steepest decline in business activity since the national Covid lockdown two years ago, as higher interest rates and low consumer confidence depressed activity in the dominant services sector.

The initial reading fell to 47.8 in January, from 49 in December, to remain in a state of contraction for the sixth consecutive month. The UK survey is conducted in conjunction with the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply.

“Weaker-than-expected PMI numbers in January underscore the risk of the UK slipping into recession,” Williamson said. “Industrial disputes, staff shortages, export losses, the rising cost of living and higher interest rates all meant the rate of economic decline gathered pace again at the start of the year,” he added.

The UK economy lost more working days to strikes between June and November 2022 than in any six-month period over the previous 30 years, according to data published last week by Britain’s Office for National Statistics.

Williamson said Tuesday’s data reflected not only short-term hits to growth, such as strike action, but “ongoing damage to the economy from longer-term structural issues such as labor shortages and trade woes linked to Brexit.”

Despite the gloomy start to the year, UK business expectations for the year ahead hit their highest level for eight months, driven by hopes of an improving global economic backdrop and cooling inflation.

Separate data published by the ONS on Tuesday showed that UK government borrowing hit £27.4 billion ($33.7 billion) in December, the highest figure for that month since records began in 1993. This was driven by a sharp increase in spending on support for household energy bills, as well as the soaring cost of paying interest on government debt.

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January 24, 2023
UK’s Crown Estate sues Twitter over alleged non-payment of rent in London offices | CNN Business

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CNN
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The Crown Estate, a British commercial property portfolio historically belonging to the monarch, began court proceedings against Twitter over the tech giant’s alleged non-payment of rent in its London offices, a spokesperson of the property business told CNN on Monday.

The Crown Estate is run by an independent board and boasts a collection of commercial buildings and land which generate profits that are collected by the British government for public spending.

According to the Crown Estate spokesperson, the legal action follows previous contact with Twitter regarding the rental arrears on its office space at 20 Air Street, London. Discussions between the companies are ongoing, the spokesperson added.

CNN has reached out to Twitter for comment.

Twitter currently faces at least one other lawsuit over unpaid rent. A commercial landlord is suing Twitter for breach of contract after the company allegedly failed to pay rent for one of its offices in San Francisco.

The lawsuit concerns Twitter’s office space at 650 California Street, not its main headquarters on Market Street. But it came after media reports said Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, had stopped paying rent on Twitter’s office space globally — including for its headquarters — and had told employees not to pay company vendors, in an apparent effort to cut costs.

Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion, including a substantial amount of debt financing.

– CNN’s Brian Fung contributed to this report

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January 23, 2023
Why is Britain’s health service, a much-loved national treasure, falling apart? | CNN

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London
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Most winters, headlines warn that Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is at “breaking point.” The alarms sound over and over and over again. But the current crisis has set warning bells ringing louder than before.

“This time feels different,” said Peter Neville, a doctor who has worked in the NHS since 1989. “It’s never been as bad as this.”

Scenes that would until recently have been unthinkable have now become commonplace. Hospitals are running well over capacity. Many patients don’t get treated in wards, but in the back of ambulances or in corridors, waiting rooms and cupboards – or not at all. “It’s like a war zone,” an NHS worker at a hospital in Liverpool told CNN.

These stories are borne out by the data. In December, 54,000 people in England had to wait more than 12 hours for an emergency admission. The figure was virtually zero before the pandemic, according to data from NHS England. The average wait time for an ambulance to attend a “category 2” condition – like a stroke or heart attack – exceeded 90 minutes. The target is 18 minutes. There were 1,474 (20%) more excess deaths in the week ending December 30 than the 5-year average.

Ambulance staff and nurses have staged a series of strikes over pay and working conditions, with the latest walkout by ambulance workers happening Monday. More are planned for the coming weeks. The chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents NHS organizations in England, wrote to the government on the eve of an ambulance strike last month to warn of NHS leaders’ concerns that they “cannot guarantee patient safety” that day. In response, a government health minister advised the public to avoid “risky activity.”

While the NHS has suffered crises before, this winter has brought a new reality: In Britain, people can no longer rely on getting healthcare in an emergency.

Founded shortly after World War II, the NHS is treated with an almost religious reverence by many. Britons danced for it during the 2012 London Olympics and clapped for it during the pandemic. “Our NHS” is a source of national pride.

Now, it is coming unstuck. There has long been an implicit contract between British people and the state: Pay taxes and National Insurance contributions in return for a health service that is free at the point of use.

But, with the tax burden on track to reach its highest sustained level since the NHS was founded, Britons are paying more and more for a service they increasingly cannot access as quickly as they need.

Some of these strains can be seen elsewhere in Europe. Doctors in both France and Spain have held strikes in recent weeks, as many countries face the same problems of providing care to an increasingly aging population – when inflation is at its highest level in decades.

Yet there are fears that the NHS is in worse shape than its international peers, and CNN spoke with experts who said they fear they’re witnessing the “collapse” of the service.

So how did Britain get here?

When Covid-19 hit, the NHS went into full crisis-fighting mode, diverting staff and resources from across the organization to care for patients with the disease.

But, for many in the NHS, Covid-19 remains a crisis from which they are yet to emerge.

During the height of the pandemic, many ordinary practices were put on hold. Millions of operations were canceled. The NHS “backlog” has ballooned. Data from November showed there were more than 7 million people on a hospital waiting list in England.

This winter, a “twindemic” of Covid and flu continues to put additional strain on capacity.

Explanations for the current crisis “have to start with a consideration of Covid-19,” Ben Zaranko, an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) whose work focuses on Britain’s health care system, told CNN. “There’s the simple fact that there are beds in hospitals occupied by Covid patients, which means those beds can’t be used for other things.”

Covid also created a strain on the amount of work the NHS can do. “If you add up all the time that staff spend doing infection control measures, donning protective equipment and separating out wards into people with and without Covid … that might impede the overall productivity of the system,” Zaranko said. Rates of NHS staff sickness are also considerably higher than they were pre-pandemic, according to IFS analysis.

But, again, Britain was not alone in battling the pandemic, yet it appears to have suffered a worse hit than comparable nations.

This is despite there being more doctors and nurses in the NHS now than there were before Covid. According to an IFS report, even after adjusting for staff sickness absences, there are 9% more consultants, 15% more junior doctors and 8% more nurses than in 2019.

Yet the NHS is treating fewer patients than before the pandemic.

“It seems to be that bits of the system aren’t fitting together anymore,” Zaranko said. “It’s not just about how much staff there are and how much money there is. It’s how it’s being used.”

Even with the increase in funding since the pandemic, the UK is still playing catchup, after what critics say is more than a decade of underfunding the NHS.

Neville, a consultant in a hospital, judges 2008 the “best” he has seen the NHS in more than 30 years of working in it. By that time, the NHS had enjoyed nearly a decade of hugely increased investment. Waiting lists fell substantially. Some even complained about getting doctor appointments too quickly.

“When the Labour government came in in 1997, they injected considerably more money into the NHS. It enabled us to appoint an adequate number of staff and get on top of our waiting lists,” Neville told CNN.

But this level of investment did not last. In response to the 2007-2008 financial crisis, the Conservatives elected in the coalition government in 2010 embarked on a program of austerity. Budgets were cut and staff salaries frozen. For Neville, the ensuing decade saw a gradual “erosion” of the system: “Slow, subtle, but nonetheless happening.”

According to analysis by health charity the Health Foundation, average day-to-day health spending in the UK between 2010 and 2019 was £3,005 ($3,715) per person per year – 18% below the EU14 [countries that joined the EU before 2004] average of £3,655 ($4,518).

During this period, capital expenditure – the amount spent on buildings and equipment – was especially low, according to the Health Foundation analysis. The UK has far fewer MRI and CT scanners per person than the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average, meaning staff often have to wait for equipment to become available.

Hospital beds are particularly scarce. Over the past 30 years the number of beds in England has more than halved, from around 299,000 in 1987 to 141,000 in 2019, according to analysis by the King’s Fund, an independent think tank.

Siva Anandiciva, chief analyst at the King’s Fund, told CNN this decrease was partly attributable to the “changing model of care.” As technology and treatments improved, people spent less time in hospital, reducing the need for beds. The last Labour government, in power from 1997 to 2010, also cut bed numbers, despite increasing investment elsewhere.

“You can keep reducing how long patients stay in hospital,” said Anandaciva, but eventually “you approach a minimum. If you then keep cutting bed numbers … that’s when you start to get into problems like performance.”

During the austerity years, bed numbers continued to be cut, leaving the UK with fewer beds per capita than almost any developed nation, according to OECD data.

“For a long time we knew we just didn’t have the bed capacity,” Anandaciva said. But cuts continued in the name of “efficiency,” he added.

While low bed numbers were seen as a marker of “success” indicating that the NHS was running efficiently, it left the UK woefully underprepared for a shock like Covid-19. The same factors that made the NHS “efficient” in one context made it grossly inefficient when that context changed, in his analysis.

The bed shortage has been made even more acute by the fact that many of those in hospital no longer need to be there – there is simply nowhere else for them to go.

“The longest I had a patient that was physically and medically ready to go home, but was sitting around waiting for discharge, was four weeks,” said Angus Livingstone, a doctor working in the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

The problem is caused by a crisis in another sector: Social care. Patients that could leave the hospital end up staying there because they cannot access more modest care in a home setting and so cannot be safely discharged.

Health and social care are separate sectors in the UK system. Healthcare is provided by the NHS, whereas social care is provided by local councils. Unlike the NHS, social care is not free at the point of use: It is rationed and means-tested.

There have long been calls to integrate the two systems, since a crisis in one system feeds through into the other.

“If you allow us to regain the enormous number of beds that are currently occupied by people awaiting social care, then I would be very confident that the immediate snarl-up in A&E and ambulances waiting outside would pretty much disappear overnight,” Neville said.

“When people ask me, ‘where do you want the money in the NHS?’ My answer is ‘I don’t want it in the NHS. I want it in social care.’”

With an increasingly aging population – the latest census data show nearly 19% of the population of England and Wales is now 65 or older – demand for social care is increasing. But the sector is struggling to provide it in the face of staffing shortages, rising costs and funding pressures.

Care work can be grueling and underpaid. Most supermarkets offer a better hourly wage, analysis from the King’s Fund found. So, it is perhaps unsurprising that the sector reported 165,000 vacancies in August.

The NHS is also reporting an alarming number of vacancies, with about 133,000 open positions as of September.

This points to a deeper crisis: Morale.

Jatinder Hayre, a doctor completing the foundation program at a hospital in East London, told CNN that morale is “at an all time low.” Staff are “stressed, fatigued, tired,” he said. “There doesn’t seem to be an end to this.”

“When you walk into the hospital in the morning, you’re met with this cacophony of grief and dismay and dissatisfaction from patients, who are lined up in the corridor,” Hayre said.

“You feel awful, but there’s nothing you can do. You’re fighting against a system that’s collapsing.”

Hayre said that most days there are “around 40 to 50 patients lined up in the corridors” as there is no space left in the wards. “It’s not appropriate. It’s not a safe or dignified environment.”

Unable to deliver an acceptable standard of care, many staff are demoralized – and considering their options. At Hayre’s hospital, “the day-to-day workplace talk is, ‘are we going to leave?’”

A junior doctor at a hospital in Manchester, who wished to remain anonymous, told CNN that she had made the decision to join the growing number of NHS doctors who are moving abroad. She plans to move abroad in the summer, to work in a country that offers doctors better pay and working conditions.

Of the eight doctors she lived with at university, six have already left. “They’ve all gone to Australia. They love it,” she said. Only one is planning to stay in the UK.

Medical students are watching in alarm as their future workplace deteriorates.

“For everyone I know, it’s almost a given that at some point they’re going to go to Australia or New Zealand,” said Eilidh Garrett, who studies medicine at Newcastle University. She is considering taking exams to work as a doctor in Canada.

This is a hugely painful decision for many young doctors. “I think about my closest friends. If I go to another country and treat other people’s closest friends, while my friends struggle to see a doctor in the UK – that is really heartbreaking,” Garrett told CNN.

Meanwhile, Britain’s vote to leave the European Union in 2016 has likely not helped the situation. Research by the Nuffield Trust health think tank, published in November, finds that long-standing staff shortages in nursing and social care “have been exacerbated by Brexit.”

The picture is “more complex” for doctors working in the NHS, the researchers found. While overall “EU numbers have remained relatively stable,” the report says, the data suggest a slowdown in the registration of specialists from the EU and European Free Trade Association countries since Brexit, particularly in certain specialties such as anesthetics.

The concern is that these issues get worse the longer they go untreated.

When patients finally get seen, their treatments take more time, forcing those after them to wait even longer as they get sicker.

“In terms of the system performance, it feels like we’re past the tipping point,” Zaranko said. “The NHS has been gradually deteriorating in its performance for some time. But we’ve gone off a cliff in recent months.”

It is unclear how the NHS regains its footing. Some compare this crisis to a period in the 1990s when services were rapidly deteriorating. The NHS was in bad shape, but restored its levels of service after a decade of historically high investment while Labour was in power.

Injections of cash on this scale are unlikely to be replicated. The most recent budget announced by the government in November will see NHS England spending rise by only 2% in real terms on average over the next two years.

“We recognize the pressures the NHS is facing so announced up to £250 million [$309 million] of additional funding to immediately help reduce hospital bed occupancy, alleviate pressures on A&E and unlock much-needed ambulance handovers,” a spokesperson from the Department of Health and Social Care told CNN in a statement.

“This is on top of the £500 million [$618 million] Discharge Fund to speed up the safe discharge of patients and rolling out virtual wards to free up hospital beds and cut waiting cuts,” the statement continued.

Pay negotiations between the government and nursing unions have so far been unsuccessful. British media outlets have reported that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak may be considering offering a one-off hardship payment of £1,000 ($1,236) to attempt to resolve the dispute, but many feel this underestimates the true nature of the crisis.

“All I hear about is sticking plasters,” Neville said. “It depresses us all.”

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January 23, 2023
Protests in Stockholm, including Koran-burning, draw strong condemnation from Turkey | CNN

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Reuters
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Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on Saturday that a planned visit by his Swedish counterpart to Ankara has been canceled after Swedish authorities granted permission for protests in Stockholm.

Protests in Stockholm on Saturday against Turkey and Sweden’s bid to join NATO, including the burning of a copy of the Quran, sharply heightened tensions with Turkey at a time when the Nordic country needs Ankara’s backing to gain entry to the military alliance.

“We condemn in the strongest possible terms the vile attack on our holy book … Permitting this anti-Islam act, which targets Muslims and insults our sacred values, under the guise of freedom of expression is completely unacceptable,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said.

Its statement was issued after an anti-immigrant politician from the far-right fringe burned a copy of the Quran near the Turkish Embassy. The Turkish ministry urged Sweden to take necessary actions against the perpetrators and invited all countries to take concrete steps against Islamophobia.

A separate protest took place in the city supporting Kurds and against Sweden’s bid to join NATO. A group of pro-Turkish demonstrators also held a rally outside the embassy. All three events had police permits.

Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said that Islamophobic provocations were appalling.

“Sweden has a far-reaching freedom of expression, but it does not imply that the Swedish Government, or myself, support the opinions expressed,” Billstrom said on Twitter.

The Quran-burning was carried out by Rasmus Paludan, leader of Danish far-right political party Hard Line. Paludan, who also has Swedish citizenship, has held a number of demonstrations in the past where he has burned the Quran.

Paludan could not immediately be reached by email for a comment. In the permit he obtained from police, it says his protest was held against Islam and what it called Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s attempt to influence freedom of expression in Sweden.

Several Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait denounced the Koran-burning. “Saudi Arabia calls for spreading the values of dialogue, tolerance, and coexistence, and rejects hatred and extremism,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Sweden and Finland applied last year to join NATO following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but all 30 member states must approve their bids. Turkey has said Sweden in particular must first take a clearer stance against what it sees as terrorists, mainly Kurdish militants and a group it blames for a 2016 coup attempt.

At the demonstration to protest Sweden’s NATO bid and to show support for Kurds, speakers stood in front of a large red banner reading “We are all PKK”, referring to the Kurdistan Workers Party that is outlawed in Turkey, Sweden, and the United States among other countries, and addressed several hundred pro-Kurdish and left-wing supporters.

“We will continue our opposition to the Swedish NATO application,” Thomas Pettersson, spokesperson for Alliance Against NATO and one of organizers of the demonstration, told Reuters.

Police said the situation was calm at all three demonstrations.

Earlier on Saturday, Turkey said that due to lack of measures to restrict protests, it had canceled a planned visit to Ankara by the Swedish defence minister.

“At this point, the visit of Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson to Turkey on January 27 has become meaningless. So we canceled the visit,” Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said.

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January 21, 2023
German indecision on Leopard 2 tanks a ‘disappointment,’ Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister says | CNN

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CNN
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Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Andriy Melnyk has expressed frustration in an interview with CNN over Germany’s indecision over whether to send its Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.

Speaking to CNN’s Isa Soares on Friday, Melnyk called Germany’s lack of action a “disappointment,” after first praising the United Kingdom for moving forward with a pledge of Challenger 2 tanks, adding he hoped the move might prompt other countries to follow suit.

The UK is the “first nation to deliver Challenger 2 main battle tanks and that might be a trigger, hopefully, for other countries but unfortunately not for Germany yet,” said Melnyk, who went on to describe Germany’s inaction as a “huge disappointment for all Ukrainians.”

Germany has so far failed to reach an agreement with its key Western allies on sending Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, despite growing pressure from NATO and Kyiv to step up its military aid ahead of a potential Russian spring offensive.

The newly-appointed German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters on the sidelines of a high-stakes defense meeting at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Friday that no decision has been made yet regarding sending Leopard tanks to Ukraine.

In his interview with Soares, Melnyk further expressed Ukraine’s disappointment with Germany’s announcement while holding out hope that Germany would weigh Ukraine’s concerns and could still decide to send the Leopard tanks.

“The government in Germany has not taken this important decision, not just to first allow other nations like Poland, Finland or Spain or Greece, which do have German battle tanks, to do the same, but also strengthen and create this, as we call it ‘Global Tanks Coalition’ to help Ukrainian forces to push out the Russians and to start the counteroffensive which will allow us to liberate the occupied territories,” Melnyk said.

“We are disappointed, but still the decision has not been taken yet so we hope that the government in Berlin will take seriously all of the concerns they heard (on Friday) in Ramstein,” Melnyk added.

“After 331 days of brutal war which Russia has been waging against Ukraine, they are still making an inventory of stocks, of (the) Bundeswehr (the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany) and in the industry, to check whether they have something to send to Ukraine! It is ridiculous,” Melnyk told CNN.

CNN reported Friday that German officials indicated they wouldn’t send their Leopard tanks to Ukraine or allow any other country with the German-made tanks in their inventory to do so unless the US also agreed to send its M1 Abrams tanks to Kyiv.

While Germany has denied claims it is dragging its feet, Ukrainian diplomats are stressing the urgency of the situation.

“Time is of the essence” in getting Western tanks into Ukraine before Russia launches an anticipated spring offensive, Oksana Markarova, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Friday.

“We need these tanks now,” Markarova said.

The tanks are “very much needed now, so that our brave defenders can be protected. So we can maneuver, we can fire and actually we can go back on the counteroffensive and we can preempt the future attacks Russia is actually planning to expand during the spring,” Markarova said.

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January 20, 2023
Opinion: ‘We can barely breathe.’ How did Britain’s treasured NHS get so sick? | CNN

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Editor’s Note: Dr. Roopa Farooki is an Internal Medicine Doctor for the NHS in South East England. She is the author of “Everything is True: A Junior Doctor’s Story of Life, Death and Grief,” on the first 40 days of the Covid-19 pandemic. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.

CNN
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I’m writing this towards midnight, having just finished a set of four 13-hour shifts in my small, coastal hospital’s Accident & Emergency (A&E) department.

It’s hard to describe the helplessness we feel, as doctors, every time we walk through the emergency waiting room, packed with patients, knowing we can only review and treat one person at a time.

Knowing that when we see someone really sick, who needs admission, that they might be waiting on that chair or trolley for over 24 hours before a bed on the ward becomes free.

I’m an internal medicine doctor for the UK’s National Health Service – better known as the NHS. I’m currently on the medical on-call team – the majority of patients who come through the front door at A&E are referred to us.

Government-funded and free at the point of care, the NHS is a source of national pride.

And it is in crisis.

There aren’t enough beds for our patients. Trying to include an extra bed on each side of the ward, is akin to trying to make more space in a car park by simply drawing the lines closer together.

And then, there are not enough staff to care for the beds that we do have. When we manage to make a patient well enough to be discharged, we find we cannot, as there is no one in the community to care for them.

No one to help with the non-medical activities of daily living, such as washing and dressing.

We work in hospitals where in the A&E, a consulting room to review and examine a patient is a luxury, and the doctors queue up for them.

I recently had to perform a lumbar puncture – where a needle is inserted into the patient’s spinal canal, to measure and collect cerebrospinal fluid for testing – normally a procedure that you could do at the bedside.

But this patient didn’t have a bed in A&E, even though they clearly needed one, and was just lying down on two chairs pushed together.

I managed to get a consulting room for 30 minutes and did the procedure there, before I was told to leave by the emergency department consultant. It seems I shouldn’t have been allowed to occupy the room for even that long.

My own son came into our A&E not so long ago. He had a dislocated shoulder after falling off his bike, on a day when I happened to be working at a different hospital.

He was treated relatively quickly, with pain relief, his shoulder popped back into place by the emergency department doctor. His X-ray repeated and checked before being discharged.

Still, he was shocked, visibly shocked at the place where I have spent much of my working life.

It’s different when you see your everyday reality though naïve eyes. He saw the elderly patients on the jigsaw of trolleys crammed into the department, pushed against the wall, squeezed in the gap between the bed and nursing stations.

He saw the fluids hanging from rails where we had no stands, lines running into the patient’s forearms. He saw the oxygen fed into their noses from cylinders propped along the bed, the cacophony of beeping machines and alarms.

It doesn’t look like it does on the TV. It doesn’t even look like it does on reality TV.

Sometimes though we can fix a patient’s problem in reasonable time. The patient’s treatment, albeit in an uncomfortable chair, can still be started. And after 24 hours of antibiotics or fluids or other interventions, they can improve enough to be discharged home.

That happened first thing this morning. It was a relief for the patient, their family and me, that I could send him home with oral antibiotics, some two days after he had come into the emergency department.

In this instance, he had not been left in the waiting room the entire time. We had placed him in a small room with five other patients having interventions in their chairs.

In these closeted spaces, informal bonds form. The patients in those rooms look out for each other. If you call out a name, and someone is too hard of hearing to answer, or in the toilet, the others will let you know where they are.

I’m always apologizing to patients. And to their families. I’m humble about the care that we can offer, with the resources and staffing that we have.

I’m always apologizing to patients. And to their families. I’m humble about the care that we can offer, with the resources and staffing that we have.

Dr. Roopa Farooki

I’m always worrying that while we’re managing the medical issues – while I’m monitoring arterial oxygenation by taking regular blood gases from their radial arteries, while our nurses are administering medication, while our radiologists are reporting the imaging – that our patients are suffering socially and psychologically.

I encourage them to call their families when they’re in the emergency department, and plug in their phone.

I urge them to keep up their food and fluid intake, while stuck in the trolley or chair. “Please have a cup of tea, and a snack, and a meal, whenever someone comes round to offer you one,” I say.

“Even if you don’t feel like it now, you might want it a bit later.”

How is this different from the pandemic? In many ways, it’s not. Then, we worked with the understanding that we might walk into a virus, get ill, and maybe even get critically ill. That’s not changed.

Many of the patients I admitted over Christmas, sitting in the same space as other patients, later tested positive for Covid-19 or Influenza A.

When I wrote an account of the first 40 days of the Covid-19 pandemic, from the start of lockdown, I described the unprecedented nature of the situation, the compromise for patients and my health care colleagues.

“Death and deterioration have been impossibly normalized. You’re living in impossible times,” I wrote.

I never thought that almost three years later we would still be working like this. I had hoped to look back at that time with learning and wisdom, knowing that it was extraordinary, that we got through it, and hoping that I had done enough to help.

But now, that egotism, that sense of what we are doing as individual clinicians is in any way significant, seems foolish.

We are caught in a trap of underfunding that means what we can offer patients isn’t enough. In medical terms, this is a chronic condition, like heart failure. We are now suffering an acute exacerbation, so the fluid that should have been pumped around efficiently is now filling our boots and our lungs. We can barely breathe.

The junior doctors, that is any doctor who is not a consultant, have experienced more than a decade’s worth of sub-inflation pay awards, amounting to a 26% decrease in pay since 2008.

Recently it has been reported that as many as 40% of my junior doctor colleagues will leave the NHS next year.

From my personal experience, that seems optimistic. No one that I know wishes to remain in the NHS once their training contract finishes. They are talking about taking a year off, agency work, heading abroad where there is better pay and conditions, having more time to see their families.

They want anything other than what they have experienced for the last three years.

Already this winter we’ve had several strikes from ambulance workers and nurses, with more planned this week.

But next year, every day will be like a strike day, if something isn’t done to prevent our clinical staff from giving up and burning out.

And the tragedy is that this feels orchestrated. This chronic disease, this failure of our hearts, has been deliberately mismanaged; with the decade of persistent underfunding, it is as though the medication that we need has been withheld, to a point of crisis.

And then the political leadership essentially say to us, “Look, you just can’t work anymore. You’re not well.” As though it is our fault.

Our treasured NHS. I still find it extraordinary that I can organize expensive tests and start life-saving treatments and procedures, from the emergency room to the intensive care unit, that would cost hundreds or thousands of pounds, and ask nothing more from a patient, for all of this, than their time in the hospital.

I still feel that being a doctor is the best job in the world, providing care for those who need it. And I have been so proud to be an NHS doctor, giving back to the place which looked after my sister through her breast cancer and chemotherapy, and me through the birth of my children.

The NHS will exist as long as there are those who will fight for it.

But we’re all so tired. People clapped for us during the pandemic, and it felt empty, performative at the time.

It means nothing when we are left to fight for the NHS on our own.

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January 20, 2023
UK government blocks Scotland’s new gender recognition law | CNN

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The UK government has blocked a new law intended to allow trans people in Scotland to change their legal gender without a medical diagnosis – a controversial move that has added fuel to the already highly emotional debate over Scottish independence.

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, called it “a full-frontal attack on our democratically elected Scottish Parliament and its ability to make its own decisions on devolved matters,” in a post on Twitter Monday.

Scottish Secretary Alister Jack earlier announced that Westminster had taken the highly unusual step of blocking the Scottish bill from becoming law because it was concerned about its impact on UK-wide equality laws – a justification that trans rights groups dismiss.

Here’s what you need to know:

Scotland passed a new law in December to make it easier for people to change their legal gender.

Under the current system, trans people must jump through a number of hoops to change the gender marker in their documents. They must have a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria – a condition defined by the distress caused by the discrepancy between a person’s body and their gender identity – and prove that they’ve been living in their chosen gender for two years. They also need to be at least 18 years old.

The new rules would drop the medical diagnosis requirement, moving instead to self-determination. The waiting time would be cut from two years to six months, and the age limit lowered to 16.

Campaigners have long argued that the current process is overly bureaucratic, expensive and intrusive. The Scottish government held two large public consultations on the issue and proposed the new, simpler rules.

“We think that trans people should not have to go through a process that can be demeaning, intrusive, distressing and stressful in order to be legally recognized in their lived gender,” the government said when proposing the new rules.

At the end, an overwhelming majority of Scottish lawmakers voted for the change — the final tally was 86 for, 39 against.

The bill sparked emotional reaction on both sides. The debate over the proposal was one of the longest, most heated in the history of the Scottish Parliament and the final vote had to be postponed after it was interrupted by protesters shouting “shame on you” at the lawmakers.

Many human rights and equality organizations and campaigners welcomed the new rules, pointing out to a growing number of democratic countries where self-determination is the norm.

The Equality Network, a leading Scottish LGBTI rights group, said that “after years of increasingly public prejudice against trans people, things have started to move forward.”

But the bill also attracted huge amount of criticism, including from “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, who said the law could have detrimental effect on the rights of women and girls.

Rowling and other opponents of the bill argue the new rules will weaken the protection of spaces that are designed to make women feel safe, such as women-only shelters.

The Scottish government has rejected that argument, saying the law doesn’t change the rules on who can and cannot access single-sex spaces. It also said that experiences from countries that have made similar changes showed no adverse impact on other groups.

Campaigners agreed. “There are no down-sides,” the campaign group Stonewall said. “For example when Ireland did it, nobody else was affected, except trans people who for the first time were able to have their gender recognised in a straightforward and empowering way by the state.”

Scotland has a devolved government, which means that many, but not all, decisions are made at the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood, Edinburgh.

The Scots can pass their own laws on issues like healthcare, education and environment, while the UK Parliament in Westminster remains in charge of issues including defense, national security, migration and foreign policy.

The UK government can stop Scottish bills from becoming laws, but only in a few very specific cases – for example if it believes the Scottish bill would be incompatible with any international agreements, with the interests of defense and national security, or if it believes that the bill would clash with a UK-wide law on issue that falls outside Scotland’s powers.

Under the rules that set out how Scotland is governed, London has four weeks to review a bill after it’s passed by Holyrood, after which it is sent to the King for Royal Assent, the last formal step that needs to happen before it becomes the law.

For the past few years, the British government has leaned into the anti-trans culture wars debate in a bid to appeal to its traditional Conservative Party base and new working-class voters in northern England.

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government had stalled on a number of initiatives for the country’s LGBTQ community, including plans to make it easier for trans people to change their gender markers in England and Wales.

Questions remain whether it is a electorally viable strategy. Yet prior to becoming prime minister, one of the first pledges by Rishi Sunak during the Conservative Party’s leadership race in 2022 was protecting “women’s rights,” he wrote in a Twitter post.

The post linked to an article in which an unnamed Sunak ally told the Daily Mail that Sunak would create a manifesto opposing trans women competing in women’s sports and calling on schools “to be more careful in how they teach on issues of sex and gender.”

In his statement, Jack argued that the bill could impact UK-wide equalities legislation.

“The Bill would have a significant impact on, amongst other things, GB-wide equalities matters in Scotland, England and Wales. I have concluded, therefore, that (blocking it) is the necessary and correct course of action.”

But advocates disagree. Rights group TransActual told CNN in a statement that it saw “no justification” for the UK government’s decision to block the bill over concern for UK-wide equality laws.

“There is no justification for this action by Scottish Secretary, Alister Jack. He will lose any case brought by the Scottish government, because the Equality Act is 100% independent of the Gender Recognition Act – and nothing in the Scottish Bill changes that,” Helen Belcher, the chair of TransActual, said in a statement.

“Trans people have never needed gender recognition to be protected by the Equality Act,” she added.

Tensions between London and Edinburgh over the issue of Scottish independence were already high.

When Scotland last held a referendum in 2014, voters rejected the prospect of independence by 55% to 45% – but things have changed since then, mostly because of Brexit.

People in Scotland voted to remain in the EU during the 2016 referendum and the pro-independence Scottish National Party has argued that Scots were dragged out of the European Union against their will, pushing for a new independence vote.

The UK government has said it would not agree to a new independence vote and Britain’s Supreme Court ruled in November that the Scottish government cannot unilaterally hold a second independence referendum.

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January 16, 2023
London police officer admits to dozens of offenses against women, including 24 cases of rape | CNN

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CNN
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A serving officer in London’s Metropolitan Police has admitted to 49 offenses, including 24 counts of rape over an 18-year period, reigniting calls for urgent reform in the United Kingdom’s largest police force.

David Carrick appeared at Southwark Crown Court in the British capital Monday to plead guilty to four counts of rape, false imprisonment and indecent assault relating to a 40-year-old woman in 2003, the UK’s PA Media news agency reported.

At the Old Bailey criminal court in London last month, Carrick admitted to 43 charges against 11 other women, including 20 counts of rape, between March 2004 and September 2020, according to PA.

A series of recent scandals has shed light on what the UK police watchdog called a culture of misogyny and racism in London’s police service.

In September 2021, Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard, a case that horrified the nation and sparked debate about violence against women.

The Metropolitan Police Service Commissioner Cressida Dick resigned from her post in 2022, after a damning review by the Independent Office for Police Conduct issued 15 recommendations “to change policing practice” in the country.

The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) called Carrick’s case one of the “most shocking” it’s ever seen.

“The scale of the degradation Carrick subjected his victims to is unlike anything I have encountered in my 34 years with the Crown Prosecution Service,” CPS Chief Crown Prosecutor Jaswant Narwal said.

“I commend every single woman who courageously shared their traumatic experience and enabled us to bring this case to court and see justice served,” Narwal continued while speaking outside Southwark Crown Court Monday.

The senior investigating officer in the case, Detective Chief Inspector Iain Moor, called Carrick’s crimes “truly shocking.”

“The police service is committed to tackling violence against women and girls in all its forms,” Moor said, adding “no one is above the law.”

Assistant Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police Barbara Gray also apologized on behalf of the police force to all the victims.

Gray said Monday that Carrick “should have been dismissed from the police service a long time ago.”

She later added: “We should have spotted his pattern of abusive behavior and because we didn’t, we missed opportunities to remove him from the organization. We are truly sorry that Carrick was able to continue to use his role as a police officer to prolong the suffering of his victims.”

“The duration and nature of Carrick’s offending is unprecedented in policing. But regrettably he is not the only Met officer to have been charged with serious sexual offences in the recent past,” she said.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “Londoners will be rightly shocked that this man was able to work for the Met for so long and serious questions must be answered about how he was able to abuse his position as an officer in this horrendous manner.”

Khan commented that work to reform the culture and standards of the Met has already started following an interim review and that a new, anonymous police complaints hotline and anti-corruption team has recently been established by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley.

“But more can and must be done,” added Khan on Twitter. “It’s vital that all victims of crime have confidence in our police, and we simply must do more to raise standards and empower police leaders to rid the Met and all other police services of those officers who are clearly unfit to serve.”

Women’s rights organizations called for an inquiry into the Met following Carrick’s case.

UK domestic abuse charity Refuge called Carrick’s crimes “utterly abhorrent.”

“When a man who has been charged with 49 offences, including 24 charges of rape, is a serving police officer, how can women and girls possibly be – or feel – safe,” Refuge tweeted Monday.

UK organization End Violence Against Women also posted on Twitter: “This is an institution in crisis. That Carrick’s pattern of egregious behaviour was known to the Met and they failed to act speaks more loudly than their empty promises to women.”

“Solidarity with the victims & all who are feeling the weight of the traumatic details being reported,” it added.

The British Women’s Equality Party tweeted: “The Met knew about the allegations for TWENTY years. They did nothing as a serial rapist abused his power. They are complicit. Misogyny will never be stripped from the police without a nationwide, statutory inquiry.”

The Fawcett Society, which campaigns for gender equality and women’s rights, said on Twitter: “Any act of sexual violence is a disgrace. But it is particularly harmful when, yet again, these crimes have been perpetrated by a person who has additional responsibilities to keep the public safe.”

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January 16, 2023
Elon Musk’s Twitter accused of unlawful staff firings in the UK | CNN Business

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CNN
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A law firm representing dozens of former UK Twitter employees is accusing the company of “unlawful, unfair and completely unacceptable treatment” of workers following recent mass layoffs, which the firm referred to as a “sham redundancy process.”

In a letter sent to the company on Monday, law firm Winckworth Sherwood alleged that Twitter violated UK law by cutting off terminated employees’ access to internal systems without engaging in the required warning and consultation period. The letter also said Twitter has failed to provide information about the selection criteria used to determine the layoffs.

The letter states that 43 affected UK employees are prepared to take the issue to an Employment Tribunal, a UK system for employees to bring legal disputes against their employers, if the company does not agree to cooperate with negotiations over the layoff process.

The warning marks the latest challenge to Twitter from former employees affected by mass layoffs that took place after Elon Musk acquired the company in October. Twitter laid off half of its global staff in early November, and has continued to fire and push out additional employees in the months since, including through an ultimatum to work “hardcore.”

More than 300 former US employees have filed demands for arbitration against the company, according to attorneys representing them. Twitter is also facing four proposed class action lawsuits in the United States related to the layoffs. Now, the backlash to the layoffs may be escalating in the UK.

“Our clients have been aghast at the direction taken by their employer, whose mission they have genuinely believed in and, in a number of cases, whose growth and transformation they have supported for many years,” lawyers for Winckworth Sherwood wrote in the letter. “They remain resolved to protect their positions, professional reputations and legal claims against the Company should it now proceed to dismiss them unlawfully and unfairly.”

Twitter, which cut much of its public relations team as part of the layoffs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.

UK trade union Prospect, which represents more than 100 UK Twitter employees, also wrote to the company this week raising concerns about its layoff process, including claims that Twitter is “choosing not to honor” its promise that employees laid off following Musk’s acquisition would receive severance with terms no less favorable than prior to his takeover.

Prospect also said the company has given workers “an arbitrary date to sign their rights away” in order to receive better separation terms, although negotiations over the layoffs are ongoing. (Typically, negotiations over mass layoffs by UK companies involve discussions of the reasons for terminations and how to minimize their size and impact.)

“It is to be celebrated that in the UK it is not possible to simply fire employees en masse at will as Twitter has done in other countries,” Prospect, said in the letter. “Rest assured, Prospect will continue to lobby the Government and raise public awareness about employers who treat their workers like commodities to be discarded on a whim.”

In the United States, there have also been concerns among Twitter employees after they began receiving their severance packages last weekend. The offers promise one month’s pay in exchange for agreeing to various terms, including a non-disparagement agreement and waiving the right to take any legal action against the company, according to Lisa Bloom, a lawyer representing dozens of former Twitter employees affected by the layoffs.

Many were dissatisfied by the offer, according to public posts and attorneys representing ex-employees, raising concerns about the terms and saying it falls short of what the company has previously promised to provide to affected employees.

The amount is also significantly less than provided at rivals like Facebook-parent Meta, which laid off thousands of workers around the same time and guaranteed them 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for each year they were employed at the company.

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January 14, 2023
UK condemns Iran’s execution of dual British-Iranian citizen Alireza Akbari | CNN

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CNN
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A dual British-Iranian citizen was hanged by Iran on charges of espionage and corruption, a state-affiliated media outlet reported Saturday, the latest in a string of executions carried out by a regime grappling with unprecedented protests across the country.

The Iranian official, Alireza Akbari, was executed for crimes including “corruption on earth,” according the Iranian judiciary-affiliated outlet Mizan. Akbari was charged with working as a spy for MI6, the British intelligence agency, and reportedly paid more than $2 million in various currencies – 1.805 million euros, 265,000 British pounds and $50,000 – Iranian state media reported Saturday.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he was “appalled by the execution.” He added on Twitter: “This was a callous and cowardly act, carried out by a barbaric regime with no respect for the human rights of their own people. My thoughts are with Alireza’s friends and family.”

Akbari allegedly provided information to foreign officials about 178 Iranian figures, including country’s chief nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iranian media reported. Fakhrizadeh was killed by a remote-controlled machine gun operating out of a car in 2020, according to state-affiliated Fars News. Iran’s top officials accused Israel of masterminding the plot at the time, without providing evidence.

Akbari purportedly carried out his intelligence work through the veneer of a private company focused on research and trade activities, working directly with research institutes in London that Iran claimed were headed by intelligence officials, Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported. IRNA also cited allegations that Akbari had meetings with an MI6 intelligence officer and former British Ambassador to Iran Richard Dalton.

Iran’s Supreme Court upheld the death penalty handed down to Akbari after deeming it to be based on “substantiated evidence,” according to IRNA.

Mizan did not specify when the execution was carried out. Akbari’s death sentence was announced just days ago, on January 11, after his conviction on spying for the United Kingdom. Akbari had denied the charges.

According to allegations published in Mizan on Wednesday, Akbari had been arrested “some time ago.” The BBC reported Akbari was arrested in 2019.

“On this basis and after filing an indictment against the accused, the file was referred to court and hearings were held in the presence of the accused’s lawyer and based on the valid documents in this person’s file, he was sentenced to death for spying for the UK,” Mizan said.

Akbari previously served as Iran’s deputy defense minister and was the head of the Strategic Research Institute, as well as a member of the military organization that implemented the United Nations resolution that ended the Iran-Iraq war, according to Iranian pro-reform outlet Shargh Daily. He served under Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, a reformist who was in office from 1997 to 2005, according to the BBC.

Though Iran does not recognize dual nationality, the execution of an individual holding British citizenship will likely further fuel tensions between Tehran and Western democracies, which have been critical of the regime’s response to anti-government demonstrations that began in September last year.

Iran has long ranked among the world’s top executioners, and Akbari is one of three individuals to receive a death sentence in the first weeks of 2023. Two young men, a karate champion and a volunteer children’s coach, were hanged last weekend after being convicted of killing a member of the country’s Basij paramilitary force. Both had allegedly taken part in the protests that began after a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, died while in custody of the country’s morality police.

Amini’s death sparked massive nationwide demonstrations against a regime often criticized as theocratic and dictatorial.

Critics have accused Tehran of responding to protests with excessive force – activist groups HRANA and Iran Human Rights say that 481 protesters have been killed – and using the country’s unjust judicial system to intimidate would-be demonstrators. United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk alleged that Tehran was “weaponizing” criminal procedures to carry out “state-sanctioned killing” of protesters.

As many as 41 more protesters have received death sentences in recent months, according to statements from both Iranian officials and in Iranian media reviewed by CNN and 1500Tasvir, but the number could be much higher.

Iranian state media has reported that dozens of government agents, from security officials to officers of the basij paramilitary force, have been killed in the unrest.

Though Akbari’s execution was, on its surface, unrelated to the recent protests, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverley alleged that the act was “politically motivated.” He said Iran’s charge d’affaires would be summoned over the execution “to make clear our disgust at Iran’s actions.”

“The execution of British-Iranian Alireza Akbari is a barbaric act that deserves condemnation in the strongest possible terms. Through this politically motivated act, the Iranian regime has once again shown its callous disregard for human life,” Cleverly said on Twitter. “This will not stand unchallenged.”

The UK government had urged Iran not to execute Akbari, and the Foreign Office said it would continue to support his family.

Amnesty International called Akbari’s execution “particularly horrific” and an “abhorrent assault on the right to life.” The rights group claimed that Akbari had said he was forcibly administered chemical substances, held in prolonged solitary confinement and forced to make recorded “confessions” repeatedly.

Amnesty urged the UK government to “fully investigate” these allegations of torture and ill treatment and “pursue all avenues to hold the Iranian authorities to account.”

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January 14, 2023
Europe gears up to send Western tanks to Ukraine | CNN

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CNN
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The Western alliance’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine received a shot in the arm this week as multiple European nations for the first time answered President Volodymyr Zelensky’s longstanding call to supply modern battle tanks to Kyiv.

France and Poland have pledged to soon send tanks for the Ukrainian military to use in its efforts to protect itself from Russia. The UK and Finland are considering following suit.

Speaking alongside Zelensky in the Ukrainian city of Lviv on Wednesday, Polish President Andrzej Duda said he hoped tanks from a range of Western allies would “soon sail through various routes to Ukraine and will be able to strengthen the defense of Ukraine.”

The moves have piled pressure on Germany, which last week said it would transfer infantry fighting vehicles to Kyiv but is yet to commit to sending tanks. Chancellor Olaf Scholz has insisted that any such plan would need to be fully coordinated with the whole of the Western alliance, including the United States.

Western officials told CNN said that the decision by some countries but not others to send more tanks was part of a broader assessment of what was happening on the ground in Ukraine. NATO allies have spent recent weeks talking in detail about which countries are best placed to provide specific types of assistance, be it military equipment or money.

One senior Western diplomat suggested that more countries could increase their levels of military support in the coming weeks as the war enters a new phase, and a fresh Russian offensive could be just around the corner as the anniversary of the invasion approaches.

But Germany’s support is seen as crucial. Thirteen European countries, including Poland and Finland, are in possession of modern German Leopard 2 tanks, which were introduced in 1979 and have been upgraded several times since, according to the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

While any re-export of the tank by these nations would typically need approval from the German government, Berlin has suggested it would not block their transfer to Kyiv.

Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck said Thursday that Berlin would not stand in the way of other countries re-exporting Leopard tanks.

“Germany should not stand in the way of other countries taking decisions to support Ukraine, independent of which decisions Germany takes,” Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck said Thursday said on the sidelines of a Greens party meeting in Berlin.

German deputy government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann said Friday that it had not received an official request from Poland or Finland.

“There is no question to which we would have to say no. But we’re saying right now that we are in a constant exchange about what is the right thing to do at this point in time and how we best support Ukraine,” Hoffmann told reporters.

General Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s most senior military commander, told the Economist in December that the military needed around 300 tanks to beat back the Russians. The European Council on Foreign Relations estimates that around 2,000 Leopard tanks are spread across Europe.

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, said on Thursday he was confident that the tanks promised from the European partners would be delivered “very, very fast” and that Ukrainian Armed Forces would “master” the use of the tanks “in a matter of weeks.”

The decision of NATO members to send the tanks to Ukraine is not an uncontroversial move. German diplomats are privately briefing their concern that it marks an escalation in the West’s response to Russia and will be viewed in Moscow as an provocation.

Other European officials argue that the West has already transfered plenty of other advanced weapons that have been used to kill Russians, as well as provided intelligence used extensively to the benefit of Ukraine. Notably, the US has supplied its long-range advanced HIMARS rocket systems to Ukraine, which have helped it turn the tide of the war in recent months. In light of this, the officials contend, sending additional tanks is not that significant an escalation, regardless of what Moscow might say.

While European allies remain largely united in their support of Ukraine, diplomats who spoke to CNN said there was disagreement as to whether sending tanks and more weapons is the fastest and most effective way to bring the conflict to an end.

According to the Kiel Institute’s tracker on how much nations have donated to Ukraine, the UK, France and Poland have given $7.5bn, $1.5bn and $3.bn respectively. That money comprises a combination of military, financial and humanitarian aid, with Poland previously sending over 200 Soviet-style tanks.

European citizens remain strongly in favor of providing support to Ukraine, according to a recent Eurobarometer poll, which found that 74% thought European countries should continue to provide assistance. This means that if Germany does decide to move in line with France, the UK and Poland, it will probably find it has the political cover to do.

It is expected that the UK and France will continue to pressure Germany into joining them in the effort in coming days. If they succeed it would mean the three major European powers in lockstep as the war rumbles toward its one-year anniversary.

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January 13, 2023
Biden admin preparing to ask Congress to approve sale of F-16 jets to Turkey | CNN Politics

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The Biden administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve the sale of 40 F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, after weighing a Turkish request for the planes for more than a year, congressional sources familiar with the deliberations told CNN.

If approved, the sale would be among the largest arms sales in years. The administration is also discussing a separate sale of 40 F-35 warplanes to Greece. There are longstanding tensions between Turkey and Greece.

Turkey was removed from the F-35 program in 2019 in response to Ankara’s decision to purchase the Russian-made S-400 missile system.

The sale to Turkey could put pressure on Ankara to approve the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO, a process that Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been blocking since last year.

Finland and Sweden were officially invited to join the alliance at the NATO summit in June last year, but as a NATO member Turkey could block them from joining.

A Finnish official told CNN that Finland has “not been part of any discussions” when it comes to the American F-16s.

“Finland has implemented everything that was agreed in Madrid in June. Now we hope all NATO members help us get our accession process over the finishing line. What comes to American F-16s, we obviously have not been part of any discussions. It is an internal US matter,” the Finnish official said.

It is not clear when the administration plans to make a formal request to Congress, as required by law for foreign military sales. But on Thursday night, the administration sent informal notifications about the prospective sale to the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations committees, kicking off the committee review process, the sources said.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the news.

Most administrations typically give Congress informal notification of proposed sales weeks before taking formal action. The informal notification process is a common practice in which the relevant committees get a heads up on planned sales, allowing committee leadership to raise concerns, give their input, or place holds.

Once the administration formally notifies the full Congress of the intended sale, lawmakers then have 30 days to block the deal, which they can do by passing a joint resolution of disapproval.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez said on Friday that he would not approve any proposed sale of F-16 aircraft to Turkey, continuing his longstanding opposition to providing the weaponry to Ankara.

“As I have repeatedly made clear, I strongly oppose the Biden administration’s proposed sale of new F-16 aircraft to Turkey,” the New Jersey Democrat said. “President Erdogan continues to undermine international law, disregard human rights and democratic norms, and engage in alarming and destabilizing behavior in Turkey and against neighboring NATO allies.”

Menendez has been highly critical of Turkey’s targeting of the Kurds and threatened incursions into northern Syria. He has slammed Ankara’s closeness with Moscow and warned the Turks against purchasing any more S-400 missile systems from Russia. Additionally, Menendez has accused Turkey of repeatedly violating Greek airspace with provocative overflights in the Aegean Sea, calling it “unacceptable behavior from a NATO country” in remarks in Athens last year.

“Until Erdogan ceases his threats, improves his human rights record at home – including by releasing journalists and political opposition – and begins to act like a trusted ally should, I will not approve this sale,” Menendez said.

At the same time, the New Jersey Democrat said he welcomed “the news of the sale of new F-35 fighter aircraft to Greece.”

“This defense capability is not only critical for a trusted NATO ally and enduring partner’s efforts to advance security and stability in the Eastern Mediterranean, but also strengthens our two nations’ abilities to defend shared principles including our collective defense, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law,” he said Friday.

A National Security Council spokesperson referred CNN to the State Department for comment.

“As a matter of policy, the Department is not going to comment on proposed defense sales or transfers until they’ve been formally notified to Congress,” State Department principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said at a briefing Friday.

“But what I would say is that Turkey and Greece both are vital, vital, NATO Allies,” he added, noting that the US has “a history of supporting their security apparatuses.”

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January 13, 2023
Sweden finds the largest rare earth deposit in Europe. It could help cut dependence on China | CNN Business

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Hong Kong
CNN
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Swedish mining company LKAB says it has found Europe’s largest deposit of rare earth oxides in the country’s north, a discovery that could reduce the continent’s reliance on China for the critical resource.

Rare earth minerals play a key role in generating clean energy and producing electric vehicles and consumer electronics. But the market is dominated by China, which accounts for 60% of global production, according to the US Geological Service.

LKAB has identified more than one million tonnes of rare earth oxides in the Kiruna area, located in the far north of the country, the company said in a statement on Thursday.

“This is good news, not only for LKAB, the region and the Swedish people, but also for Europe and the climate,” said Jan Moström, president and group CEO of LKAB.

No rare earth elements are currently being mined in Europe, leaving it dependent on imports. The European Union gets 98% of the minerals from China, according to the European Commission.

But demand is expected to surge as a result of electrification, which will lead to a global “undersupply” at a time of increasing geopolitical tensions, LKAB said.

The company added that the region’s dependence on China for rare earth minerals increases the vulnerability of European industry.

“Electrification, the European Union’s self-sufficiency and independence from Russia and China will begin in the mine,” said Ebba Busch, Sweden’s minister for energy, business and industry, in the same statement. “We need to strengthen industrial value chains in Europe and create real opportunities for the electrification of our societies. “

Still, the road to mining the deposits is long, LKAB added. It plans to submit an application for a permit later this year.

“If we look at how other permit processes have worked within our industry, it will be at least 10-15 years before we can actually begin mining and deliver raw materials to the market,” it said.

Given its importance in the tech industry, rare earths have become one of the main fronts in the US-China competition as well.

The United States, which has long relied on China for the minerals, is seeking to strengthen its domestic supply chain to emerge as a dominant global player. In 2021, the Biden administration targeted rare earths, among other domestic supply chain priorities, to reduce the vulnerability of these industries to geopolitical tension.

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January 13, 2023
Iraqis celebrate their comeback with soccer tournament after decades of isolation | CNN
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Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in today’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, CNN’s three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.

Baghdad and Abu Dhabi
CNN
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Iraq is holding its first international soccer tournament in more than four decades, hosting its Gulf Arab neighbors for a two-week competition as it emerges from its worst and longest political deadlock in years.

The tournament, analysts say, is a glimmer of hope for a struggling population, but also holds a political message – Iraq is signaling to its neighbors and the world that it is ready to move past decades of turmoil.

After more than 30 years of global isolation due to wars and sanctions, for many Iraqis the Arabian Gulf Cup – the tournament started on Friday and will run until January 19 – is something of a tonic.

“Iraq is a football-mad country that has been lobbying for years for the right to host competitive international games,” said Patrick Osgood, associate director of the Control Risks consultancy firm in Dubai.

This is the first time Iraq has hosted the Gulf Cup since 1979, when it was held in the capital Baghdad. This time, the tournament is being held in the southern port city of Basra, with teams from Saudi Arabia, Oman, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Yemen also competing.

Since it last hosted the Gulf Cup, the nation has faced two devastating wars, a regime change, an occupation and a militant insurgency that impacted the once thriving Basra as it did the rest of the country. Of late, the city’s residents have encountered severe energy and food shortages that have led to unrest.

“The practical effect in a city in dire need of investment is likely to be small,” Osgood told CNN. “But Iraqis deserve nice things, to participate with others, to be able to exercise hospitality.”

There is excitement and fervor in Basra about the tournament. Murals adorn the city’s walls and fans were seen joining long queues for tickets. Flags flutter from every participating nation in streets and there are welcoming posters reading, “Basra welcomes you” and “Basra is your home.”

“We’ve been waiting for this moment for 40 years,” said 29-year-old Mohammed Ali, a taxi driver in Basra, adding that the city feels very secure and its residents are filled with joy for the occasion.

“We have experienced problems, but we always say that sport unites people,” he told CNN. “We are seeing many people from the Gulf, and we can tell that they too have missed Basra.”

The last Gulf Cup was held in Qatar in 2019, with Bahrain emerging as the winner.

Gulf Arabs rarely travel to Iraq for tourism. Of all the Gulf states, only the travel hubs of Doha and Dubai have direct flights to the country, catering largely to connecting passengers and Shiite Muslim pilgrims. Gulf states’ ties with the Iraqi government have warmed over the past few years, but that hasn’t trickled down to the public level. In Saudi Arabia, government permission is required for travel to Iraq, which is only given to men above 40.

Major General Saad Maan, head of public relations at the Iraqi interior ministry, told CNN that he expects “tens of thousands of fans to arrive in Basra” and that all security measures have been taken to assure the safety of both residents and fans.

“Iraq is saying that there is great political stability,” said Ihsan Al-Shammari, a politics professor at Baghdad University and head of the Iraqi Centre for Political Thought. “It also speaks to the security situation, especially if the tournament is successfully completed without any security incidents.”

Iraq also hopes that the event will bolster its image to investors and political partners, said Al-Shammari, as well as bring it closer to its Gulf Arab neighbors with whom it has had frosty relations since Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

The opening ceremony on Friday started with a spectacular fireworks display and a theatrical performance chronicling the nation’s 5,000-year history, though the showpiece occasion wasn’t without controversy.

The Iraqi Football Association apologized to Kuwait for a brawl that took place in the Basra International Stadium’s VIP section that prevented the Kuwaiti ruler’s representative from entering. That prompted the rest of the delegation to leave the event. The Kuwait FA said it will continue participation in the tournament after being given security guarantees from Iraq.

Iraq drifted into chaos after a 2003 US-led invasion toppled longtime ruler Saddam Hussein, and around the end of 2021 fell into its longest political stalemate as the country’s various political factions – divided mainly between Shiite blocs and their Iran-backed rivals – failed to form a government.

The deadlock was only broken last October with the election of a new president and premier, but experts remain skeptical about whether the new government can prevent further stability and instill serious reforms.

The country’s economy is still in crisis, much of its infrastructure is in ruins and its ties with neighboring states are strained as Iran continues to support prominent political factions and their armed militias.

While not the center of most violence, Basra has its own issues.

“Basra city experiences security issues around crime and protest activity,” said Osgood, “but neither issue is prohibitive, and the government has surged security provision to mitigate threats.”

“On balance, there’s unlikely to be major security disruption during the tournament,” he said, adding that “there are significant socio-economic issues in Basra that drive unrest, but there’s also significant goodwill around the tournament – no one wants to spoil it.”

The tournament is not on the international soccer radar but it is a heated topic in the Gulf region and has often been reflective of the region’s geopolitical scene.

Iraq last hosted the Gulf Cup 44 years ago, when it won the tournament. The nation was banned from it for about a decade after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and was prevented from hosting it since due to security reasons.

Despite the hiccups, residents of Basra are optimistic about the tournament in their city.

“The whole of Basra is joyous, opening its doors to the Gulf and other provinces (of Iraq),” said 46-year-old Ali Salman of Basra.

“We want to say to visitors from the Gulf and other provinces of Iraq: don’t rent hotels, the doors of our homes are open.”

Iran executes two more men amid crackdown on protests

Iran executed two men – one a karate champion, the other a volunteer children’s coach – in connection with nationwide protests, sparking outrage around the world. The European Union said in a statement Saturday that it was “appalled” by the executions, calling it “yet another sign of the Iranian authorities’ violent repression of civilian demonstrations.”
Background: The pair were alleged to have participated in anti-regime protests and were convicted of killing a member of the country’s Basij paramilitary force, were hanged early Saturday morning, according to state-affiliated media.

Why it matters: The total number of people now known to have been executed in connection with the protests has reached four. As many as 41 more protesters have received death sentences in recent months, according to statements from both Iranian officials and in Iranian media reviewed by CNN and 1500Tasvir, but the number could be much higher.
Sweden says it can’t meet all of Turkey’s NATO demands

Sweden is confident that Turkey will approve its application to join the NATO military alliance, but will not meet all the conditions Ankara has set for its support, Reuters cited Sweden’s prime minister as saying on Sunday. “Turkey both confirms that we have done what we said we would do, but they also say that they want things that we cannot or do not want to give them,” Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told a defence think-tank conference in Sweden.
Background: Finland and Sweden signed a three-way agreement with Turkey in 2022 aimed at overcoming Ankara’s objections to their membership of the alliance. They applied to join NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but Turkey objected and accused the countries of harboring militants. New entrants require the consensus of all existing members.

Why it matters: It is unclear if the steps taken by the two candidates will satisfy Turkey, which has delayed the accession of the two countries to extract concessions from them. The move has been seen as benefiting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ahead of elections this year.
Israel arrests two teens over Jerusalem Christian cemetery vandalism

Israel Police arrested two teenagers suspected of vandalizing at least 28 tombstones and damaging a Protestant cemetery near Jerusalem’s Mount Zion, they announced on Friday. The suspects, aged 18 and 14, from central Israel, will be brought before a judge to decide on an extension of their detention following their arrest late on Thursday. “The investigation continues with the aim of bringing them to justice,” a statement from Israel’s police spokesperson in Jerusalem said.
Background: The Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East said in a statement earlier last week that “vandals” had “purposely and relentlessly smashed more than thirty gravestones, many of them historic,” in the cemetery. The church said there was clear indication that “these criminal acts were motivated by religious bigotry and hatred against Christians.” Israel Police said the vandalism took place on Sunday, January 1.

Why it matters: The attack on the cemetery and Israel’s handling of it is likely to be in the spotlight after the country swore in the most right-wing government in its history last month. Police did not name the suspects or comment on a possible motive, but Chief Superintendent Assaf Harel said: “Any damage to religious institutions and sites is serious and damages the unique and delicate fabric of life that exists in the city for members of all religions and denominations.”
Bidding farewell to an iconic London bookshop: Al Saqi Books stood for freedom of thought and expression, cultural diversity and empathy with all peoples.

Saqi books continues on, with the bookshop always in our hearts. pic.twitter.com/r7KWvQAhXp

— Saqi Books (@SaqiBooks) December 5, 2022

London’s first Arabic bookstore bid farewell as it closed its doors in 2023, marking the end of a 44-year-old era for Arabic literature in Europe.

Citing economic difficulties, the advent of electronic reading and logistical challenges brought on by Brexit, the founders of Al Saqi Bookstore found the burden of keeping its doors open too heavy.

Regarded as Europe’s leading Arabic bookstore, Al Saqi, which means water seller in Arabic, was founded in 1978 by lifelong friends André Gaspard and Mai Ghoussoub. They opened the store after fleeing the Lebanese Civil War that started in 1975 and lasted until 1990.

The shop at first only carried books in Arabic, later expanding its collection to English, for Europeans who wanted to learn about Arabic culture. It also runs a publishing house in London and Beirut, which will continue to operate.

“It was home for us misfits” the founder’s daughter and publisher Lynn Gaspard told the BBC in an interview.

London is home to a large Arab diaspora. For decades, the city has been a refuge for Arabs fleeing war, economic turmoil and political persecution. But it is also a major hub for tourists, with many Gulf Arabs keeping summer homes in the city.

For many, Al Saqi was the place to find books banned in the Middle East, with Arab travelers to Europe often making a stop in London to stock up.

But as Al Saqi’s door closes, another one may open as the store’s legacy has inspired one of its own employees to carry the torch.

Mohammad Masoud, a bookseller at the store, is now crowdfunding for a new initiative called “Maqam” that aims to open a similar shop.

“This is what Maqam is about. It exists for people who are in need of Arabic content and are searching for belonging,” he told Al Jazeera.

By Mohammed Abdelbary
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January 9, 2023
Prince Harry says ‘heinous, horrible’ stories have been ‘spoon-fed’ to press from the palace | CNN

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Prince Harry told CBS’ 60 Minutes Sunday he hasn’t spoken with his brother, Prince William, for “a while,” in the second of two major interviews ahead of the publication of his memoir, “Spare” on Monday.

The Duke of Sussex told Anderson Cooper he doesn’t “currently” speak with the Prince of Wales, “but I look forward to us being able to find peace,” he said. It follows an interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby, ahead of what is likely to be an explosive week for the British royals with the release of Harry’s memoirs.

The interviews address a wide range of topics from the death of Prince Harry’s mother, the Princess of Wales, his frustration towards the British press, the treatment of his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, and the subsequent fallout with his family since his marriage.

Buckingham Palace has repeatedly declined to comment on the contents of Prince Harry’s forthcoming memoir.

In the interview and in excerpts from his memoir shared by ITV, the Duke of Sussex addressed how strife in his family has been fueled by the relationship between Buckingham Palace and media outlets.

“We’re not just talking about family relationships, we’re talking about an antagonist, which is the British press, specifically the tabloids who want to create as much conflict as possible,” Prince Harry told Bradby. “The saddest part of that is certain members of my family and the people that work for them are complicit in that conflict.”

He also stated that the “leaking” and “planting” of “a royal source” to the press “is not an unknown person, it is the palace specifically briefing the press, but covering their tracks by being unnamed.”

Prince Harry added that he thinks “that’s pretty shocking to people. Especially when you realize how many palace sources, palace insiders, senior palace officials, how many quotes are being attributed to those people, some of the most heinous, horrible things have been said about me and my wife, completely condoned by the palace because it’s coming from the palace, and those journalists have literally been spoon-fed that narrative without ever coming to us, without ever seeing or questioning the other side.”

He spoke about how his mother was hunted by paparazzi, recalling the traumatic night his father told him Princess Diana had died from injuries sustained in a car crash.

“I don’t want history to repeat itself. I do not want to be a single dad. And I certainly don’t want my children to have a life without a mother or a father,” Prince Harry said in the interview.

The Duke of Sussex also talked about his decision to write the book, saying, “thirty-eight years of having my story told by so many different people, with intentional spin and distortion felt like a good time to tell own my story and be able to tell it for myself. I’m actually really grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to tell my story because it’s my story to tell.”

Prince Harry pointed out that he has tried over the last six years to resolve his concerns with his family privately.

“It never needed to get to this point. I have had conversations, I have written letters, I have written emails, and everything is just, ‘No, you, this is not what’s happening. You, you are imagining it,’” he said. “That’s really hard to take. And if it had stopped, by the point that I fled my home country with my wife and my son fearing for our lives, then maybe this would have turned out differently. It’s hard.”

The duke said he wants “reconciliation but first there needs to be some accountability,” with respect to his family.

“You can’t just continue to say to me that I’m delusional and paranoid when all the evidence is stacked up, because I was genuinely terrified about what is going to happen to me,” he said.

“And then we have a 12-month transition period and everyone doubles. My wife shares her experience. And instead of backing off, both the institution and the tabloid media in the UK, both doubled down,” he added.

Still, the duke said, “forgiveness is 100 percent a possibility,” during the interview.

“There’s probably a lot of people who, after watching the documentary and reading the book, will go, how could you ever forgive your family for what they have done? People have already said that to me. And I said forgiveness is 100% a possibility because I would like to get my father back. I would like to have my brother back. At the moment, I don’t recognize them, as much as they probably don’t recognize me,” Prince Harry said.

On Monday, the duke’s interview with “Good Morning America” co-anchor Michael Strahan will air on the ABC show, followed in the evening by a half-hour special on ABC News Live. And to top things off, the duke will make an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” hours after his book is released on Tuesday.

With that all to come before the public is even able to get their hands on book, one has to wonder if there will be any revelations left to read. For days now, leaks from the upcoming tome have sparked headlines around the world.

It is now known the duke has made a slew of damaging accusations against the British royal family in “Spare” after several outlets obtained early copies of the book before the weekend. CNN has not seen a copy of the book but has requested an advance copy from the publisher Penguin Random House.

Perhaps the most incendiary revelation to emerge was Prince Harry’s claim of a scuffle with the Prince of Wales during an argument over his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex in 2019, as he described while reading in an excerpt of his memoir on air on Sunday.

Prince Harry said his brother never tried to dissuade him from marrying Meghan, but expressed some concerns and told him, “‘This is going be really hard for you,’” Prince Harry recalled during his interview.

“I still to this day don’t truly understand which part of what he was talking about,” Prince Harry continued. “Maybe he predicted what the British press’s reaction was going to be.”

His relationship with Prince William is just one of a series of incredibly candid accounts of life as the “spare heir” in his memoir. The book’s title of “Spare” – a reference to a nickname the duke lived with while growing up. Prince Harry’s version of events also tackles his final moments with the late Queen Elizabeth II, his attempts to seek closure after his mother’s death, and other deeply personal conversations with members of “The Firm.”

One part of the book that is seeing some backlash is his reported remarks on killing 25 Taliban fighters during his time in the British Army in Afghanistan. In addition to disclosing the figure, the duke is also quoted as describing the insurgents as “chess pieces” taken off the board rather than people, according to UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph.

Prince Harry’s comments have prompted criticism from some British security and military figures – and an angry rebuke from the Taliban.

Before publicity ramped up around the duke’s book, the Sussexes had previously opened up about the challenges and hardships of royal life in their Netflix docuseries and to Oprah Winfrey.

In both those royal exposés, the couple outlined their acrimonious split with the House of Windsor and blamed the media for invasive, unrelenting coverage, particularly of Meghan.

The Sussexes announced in 2020 that they were stepping away from their roles as senior royals and planned to work towards becoming “financially independent.” The following year, the palace confirmed the couple had agreed with Queen Elizabeth II that they were not returning as working members of the royal family.

In the recent six-part Netflix documentary, Prince Harry didn’t hold back when he blamed the press for placing undue stress on his wife, saying it led to her having a miscarriage and suffering suicidal thoughts.

Meghan said she wanted to go somewhere for help but claimed she wasn’t allowed to because of the optics on the institution, without specifying who she believed stopped her. She made similar comments in her explosive 2021 interview with Winfrey.

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January 8, 2023
‘We’re trapped’: Britons in homes with unsafe cladding see no way out as living costs soar | CNN

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London
CNN
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In May 2017, Sophie Bichener did what many in their twenties are unable to do: buy a home. She paid around £230,000 (around $295,000 at the time) for her two-bedroom apartment in a high-rise building in a town north of London, where a train could get her to work in the capital in less than half an hour. She had her foot on the first rung of Britain’s housing ladder, an increasingly difficult feat, and it felt like the only way was up.

A month later, Bichener woke up to news that would change her life. A fire had broken out at a similar block to hers: the 24-story Grenfell Tower in west London, which was encased in flammable cladding. The material meant to keep out the wind and rain went up like a matchstick. The fire killed 72 people and left an entire community homeless and heartbroken. The ordeal sent Bichener into a panic. Was her building also at risk, she wondered?

The burned remains of Grenfell stood uncovered for months, looming over one of London’s richest boroughs. It became a monument that to many symbolized the disastrous effects of austerity – the decade-long policy of cost-cutting embarked on by the Conservatives in response to the financial crisis of 2008. The tragedy was made all the more stark by its surroundings: the public housing block is just a five-minute walk from Kensington properties worth tens of millions of pounds. Look one way: scarcely imaginable wealth. The other: a hulking symbol of a broken and divided Britain.

In the wake of the fire, there was a wave of promises from politicians that things would change – that building safety would be improved, social housing reformed, and that responsibility would be taken for the government agenda of public spending cuts, deregulation and privatization that acted as kindling for the tragedy that unfolded.

But in the five years since, Britons living in tower blocks with unsafe cladding have found themselves stuck in a perpetual state of limbo. CNN spoke with 10 people, who all say they are paralyzed by fear that their buildings could catch fire at any moment, and crippled by costs thrust upon them to fix safety defects that were not their fault – despite the government promising they would not have to “pay a penny.”

Now, their problems are compounded by a fresh disaster: a spiraling cost-of-living crisis. As energy prices and inflation soar, residents like Bichener are facing an impossible situation, burdened not only by sky-high bills but also the eye-watering expense of remediating properties that now feel more like prisons than homes.

Residents told CNN they were living in a perpetual state of anxiety, inundated by text alerts informing them of mounting bills and waiting on tenterhooks for the next buzz of their phone. Some said their building insurance had quadrupled since they moved in, while others were burdened by ballooning service charges – hundreds of pounds a month for safety fixes that hadn’t been started.

Many said they had left their mortgages on variable rates in the hopes they could eventually sell their apartments, but after the Bank of England hiked interest rates this fall their repayments had become untenable, with monthly payments almost doubling in some cases. Paired with the rising costs of living – more expensive energy, fuel and food – the residents CNN spoke with said they are finding themselves several thousand pounds a year poorer.

When Bichener bought her flat in Vista Tower in Stevenage, a 16-story office block built in 1965 and converted into residential housing in 2016, there was “no mention” of fire hazards, she said. “When Grenfell happened we spoke to our local council just to double-check all the buildings in the town. We asked the management agent and freeholder [the owner of the apartment building and land] if they have any concerns. At that point, everyone was saying no, all these buildings are good,” Bichener told CNN.

But there were soon signs of trouble. The developer that built the block put itself into liquidation – the first “red flag,” Bichener said. Emails to the freeholder went unanswered – the second. Then confirmation: In 2019, two years after Grenfell, the management agent reported that the building was unsafe. An inspection had found an array of hazards not previously listed.

After the revelations, a group of former Grenfell residents came to visit Vista Tower to raise awareness about the nationwide cladding crisis. Bichener said that one man who had lost a family member in the Grenfell fire told her he was struck by the similarities: “He said he went cold.”

In November 2020, she was hit with a life-changing bill from the freeholder. “The whole project, all of the remediation, came to about £15 million.” Split between the leaseholders, it worked out to be about £208,000 per flat.

That bill – almost the same price she initially paid for the flat – has hung over Bichener’s head since. The government has offered little help and the political chaos in Britain has made matters worse. There have been seven housing secretaries in the five years since Grenfell, as the governing Conservative Party remains embroiled in internal strife. Some have begun to make progress – including threatening legal action to get the company that owns Vista Tower to pay up rather than passing the cost on to the residents – only to find themselves out of the job weeks later.

“I can’t afford to live in this building anymore. I don’t want to pay the service charge, I don’t want to pay all of the horrific leaseholder costs. I just don’t want it. But I can’t get out.”

Sophie Bichener

Meanwhile, Bichener is still waiting for her life to get back on track. She is unable to sell, because banks are unwilling to lend against the property, and, in recent months, her mortgage, insurance and service charge have all shot up. The crippling costs meant she delayed getting married and has put off having children.

“I can’t afford to live in this building anymore. I don’t want to pay the service charge, I don’t want to pay all of the horrific leaseholder costs. I just don’t want it. But I can’t get out,” Bichener, now 30 years old, said. “I’m trapped.”

And she’s not alone. Hundreds of thousands of people are believed to be in the same boat, but the UK government has failed to commission a full audit, which means the scale of the impact is unclear. Peter Apps, deputy editor at Inside Housing, who has covered the story meticulously over the past five years, estimates there are likely more than 600,000 people in affected tall buildings and millions more in medium-rise towers – those between five and 10 stories. CNN has been unable to verify the precise number.

The problems playing out now are the result of decades of poor policy choices, according to Apps. His new book detailing the Grenfell tragedy and subsequent inquiry, “Show Me the Bodies,” claims the UK “let Grenfell happen” through a combination of “deregulation, corporate greed and institutional indifference.”

Evidence presented to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry found that the local council, which managed the building, had made a £300,000 ($389,400) saving by switching higher quality zinc cladding to a cheaper aluminum composite material (ACM). This meant for an additional £2,300 ($3,000) per flat, the fire might have been prevented.

Any regulations demanding developers use better quality materials were seen as being “anti-business,” Apps told CNN. Developers did not even have to use qualified fire safety inspectors to carry out checks on their buildings – just individuals the developers themselves deemed to be “competent.”

So extensive was the deregulation that the problems were not confined just to high-rise tower blocks – or even to cladding. Instead, many low-rise buildings suffer from problems ranging from poor fire cavities to flammable insulation.

“The cladding wasn’t the issue at all,” said Jennifer Frame, a 44-year-old travel industry analyst, who lived in Richmond House in south-west London. “It was the fact that it was a timber frame building, with a cavity between that and the cladding,” she added, a safety defect that was confirmed by an inspection report.

One night in September 2019, a fire broke out in a flat in Richmond House. Rather than being contained in one room, the cavity acted “like a chimney,” Frame said. An independent report commissioned by the building owner, Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing Association, and included in written evidence submitted to the UK parliament by residents, revealed that the cavity barriers were either “defective” or “entirely missing” at Richmond House, allowing the fire to spread “almost unhindered” through the 23-flat block.

“The use of materials such as ACM within cladding systems has rightly attracted a lot of attention since Grenfell. It is now clear that there is a much wider failure by construction companies,” the residents said in their submission.

Sixty residents lost their homes that night. Three years later, Frame is still living in temporary accommodation in the same borough of London, while paying the mortgage for her property which no longer exists. Perversely, she said she feels lucky that it’s only the mortgage – and not the monumental cost of remediations – that she’s on the hook for.

“I do consider myself – for lack of a better word – one of the lucky ones, as we don’t have the threat of bankruptcy hanging over our head any more,” she said.

CNN reached out for comment to the developer of Richmond House, Berkeley Group, but did not receive a reply. Berkeley Group has previously denied liability.

Years of delay and disputes over who should cover the cost, combined with the sheer stress of living in unsafe buildings, have weighed heavily on residents.

Bichener moved back to her parents’ house in 2020. “I just couldn’t face being there,” she said. “I ended up on anti-anxiety and anti-depression medication just from being in those four walls in a pandemic, in a dangerous home, with a life-changing sum of money that would potentially bankrupt me over my head.”

At a rally for the End Our Cladding Scandal campaign, she recalled being with a group of people her age and how they all broke down in tears. “They’re the only people who understand the situation you’re in. Everyone’s having huge crises over this.”

Their options are limited. Most can’t sell their properties, since banks won’t offer mortgages against them. Even if banks were to reverse this policy, it is unclear whether there would be a demand for them, given the spiraling costs of borrowing. According to the residents CNN spoke with, a scant few have been able to sell to cash buyers – but often at a 60-80% loss.

Some have become “resentful landlords,” a term used by residents who are unable to sell their properties, but are so desperate to move out that they rent it out cheaply to others. Lilli Houghton, 30, rents out her flat in Leeds, a city in the north of England, at a loss to a new tenant. She still pays the service charge for her flat, while also renting a new place elsewhere.

Most have no choice but to wait – but five years has felt like an eternity. When Zoe Bartley, a 29-year-old lawyer, bought her one-bedroom apartment in Chelmsford, a city in Essex, she thought she’d sell it within a few years to move into a family home.

But she hasn’t been able to sell. She found a buyer in January 2020 – but their mortgage was declined after an inspection of the building found a number of fire safety defects.

Bartley’s 15-month-old son still sleeps in her bedroom. When her two stepchildren come to stay, “they have to sleep in the living room,” she said. “When they were four and five and I’d just started dating their dad,” they were excited to have sleepovers in the living room. Now they’re nine and 10, “it’s just pathetic,” Bartley said.

Bartley said she struggles to sleep knowing that a fire could break out at night. Others who spoke to CNN say they have trained their children on what to do when the alarms go off.

Earlier this year, residents in unsafe buildings began to see some fledgling signs of progress. In a letter to developers, the then-housing secretary, Michael Gove, said it was “neither fair nor decent that innocent leaseholders … should be landed with bills they cannot afford to fix problems they did not cause.” He set out a plan to work with the industry to find a solution.

First, he gave developers two months “to agree to a plan of action to fund remediation costs,” estimated at £4 billion (around $5.4 billion). That deadline passed with no agreement reached.

To force developers’ hands, the Building Safety Act was passed into law in April, which requires the fire safety defects in all buildings above 11 meters to be fixed and created a fund to help cover the costs. The act implemented a “waterfall” system: Developers would be expected to pay first, but, if they are unable to, then the cost would fall to the building owners. If they are also unable to pay, only then would the cost fall to the leaseholders. Leaseholders’ costs were capped at £10,000 ($11,400), or £15,000 ($17,000) in London, for those who met certain criteria. The government asked 53 companies to sign this pledge; many did.

For many residents, this came as a relief. They had faced life-changing bills for years, but the cap meant they wouldn’t be totally wiped out. It seemed the worst of their worries were over.

But there was a problem: The pledge made by developers wasn’t legally binding. Even though the government has made money available for remediation, no mechanism has yet forced any developers to make use of it.

One resident explained to CNN: “Prior to Michael Gove, your building owner could give you a bill to replace the cladding. They’re now not able to do that anymore, but that doesn’t mean your building gets fixed.”

The government tried again. In July it published contracts to turn the “pledge into legally binding undertakings.” If developers signed the contract, this would commit them to remediating their buildings. Still, there was nothing obliging the developers to sign these contracts – and so none did.

In October, Vista Tower – where Bichener lives – came under scrutiny. Then-Housing Secretary Simon Clarke set a 21-day deadline for Grey GR, the owner of the building, to commit to fixing it. “The lives of over 100 people living in Vista Tower have been put on hold,” Clarke said. “Enough is enough.” Bichener stressed her building was just one among thousands in need of remediation, but welcomed this as a “step in the right direction.”

But when that deadline came, Clarke was already out of the job. He had been appointed by former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss, but after her six-week premiership came to an end, Clarke was replaced in the subsequent reshuffle. The deadline passed without Grey GR making any commitment.

Gove was reappointed by new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as Clarke’s successor in October. In response to questions from CNN, the UK’s Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) confirmed that the government has started formal proceedings against Grey GR.

“We are finalizing the legally binding contracts that developers will sign to fix their unsafe buildings, and expect them to do so very soon,” a DLUHC spokesperson said in a statement.

“I think the ‘who’s paying’ question will drag on for many years. That might be through court cases and tribunals. But I don’t see how it will be resolved.”

Sophie Bichener

Grey GR told CNN that it was “absolutely committed to carrying out the remediation works required,” but that they had not started yet due to obstacles in receiving government funds.

“Issues with gaining access to [the Building Safety Fund], created by Government, have been, and remain, the fundamental roadblock to progress,” Grey GR said in a statement, adding that the security of residents was of the “utmost priority” and that it was taking steps to make buildings safer.

But, according to Bichener, residents are no safer than they were five years ago. All that has changed is that, legally, they will no longer have to pay tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds to fix their buildings.

That hasn’t stopped building owners from seeking funds from residents though. “The amount of £208,430.04 is outstanding in connection with [your] property,” read a letter sent to a resident of Vista Tower by the building owner in November. “We would appreciate your remittance within the next seven days.”

In the meantime, life for the residents of these buildings goes on. Since speaking to CNN, Bichener got married. She and her husband are both paying off their own mortgages until she is able to sell her flat. For years they had been “stressed,” she said, asking “do we tie ourselves together and have these two properties?” But they decided they couldn’t put their lives on pause forever because of her Vista Tower nightmare.

“I want to have left,” Bichener said of where she wants to be, a year from now. “The dream is that I no longer own that property and I am long gone and I never have to see it or visit it again.

“But if I’m realistic, I think we’ll be in the same situation. I think the ‘who’s paying’ question will drag on for many years. That might be through court cases and tribunals. But I don’t see how it will be resolved.”

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December 30, 2022
‘Life or death.’ As Britons buckle under the cost of living crisis, many resort to ‘warm banks’ for heat this winter | CNN

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London
CNN
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In a community center in central London, a young child plays in a makeshift area as her caregiver rocks her stroller and chats to a friend.

The Oasis Centre in Waterloo sits in a four-story building that has a warm, inviting feeling, with plush chairs and lots of potted plants.

But it’s not your regular high street hangout. This is a haven for families and local people to escape the bitter squeeze of Britain’s cost-of-living crisis – if only for the afternoon.

Thousands of warm banks have opened their doors across the UK this winter, as household budgets are squeezed even further by spiking energy bills and inflation reaches a 40-year high, leaving many scrambling to pay for basic necessities. There are more than 3,000 registered organizations running warm banks in Britain, according to the Warm Welcome Campaign, an initiative that signposts community-led responses to the cost-of-living crisis.

“A lot of people are struggling,” Charlotte, a community and families worker at the center, tells CNN. Her full name is not being disclosed for privacy reasons.

“We haven’t even really got to the peak of the living crisis yet,” the 33-year-old mother-of-four adds. “No one should be choosing whether to put food on the table or to put the heating on.”

The hub is funded by donations from individuals and local businesses, as well as grant incomes from charitable trusts.

The cost of living has risen sharply since early 2021, according to data from the UK government. From October 2021 to October 2022, domestic gas and electricity prices increased by 129% and 66% respectively, the same research found.

The average annual energy bill surged 96% from last autumn to £2,500 (roughly $3,000), with the UK government intervening to cap the unit cost of gas and electricity bills at that level until April 2023. However, the total amount consumers pay for their energy depends on their consumption habits, where they live, how they pay for energy and what type of meter they use, according to the UK’s regulator, Ofgem.

Charlotte, who works at and uses the warm space in Waterloo, says she limits her gas and electricity use in her flat. Instead of turning on the heating in the evening, she and her partner sit under quilts and use hot water bottles to stay warm, she says.

She also anticipates her household energy costs increasing over Christmas, as her children, who are between 4 and 17 years old, spend more time at home during the school holidays. At the moment, Charlotte spends most days at the hub and said this habit will continue over the holidays to help alleviate her costs at home.

Grace Richardson is an adult services manager at Future Projects in Norwich, in eastern England, an organization that offers health, housing and financial support to residents. She says her team started planning over the summer to provide a warm space in the organization’s Baseline Centre, located in an area with significant poverty.

“This winter in particular, it’s extremely important that we’re offering a space that people can turn everything off at home and they can save money,” she tells CNN.

“We’ve got people here working full time and they cannot make ends meet. That’s where the real difference is.”

From young parents to pensioners to students in their 20s, Richardson says that people from all walks of life use the warm space, with about 25 attending each day. The warm bank, where staff serve meals, is subsidized by grant funding from the local council and private or corporate foundations, as well as donations from individuals.

Michael John Edward Easter, 57, says the service at the Baseline Centre has been a lifeline for him this winter.

Easter, who has lymphedema in both legs and arthritis in one knee, is unable to work. Speaking to CNN earlier this month, he said he’d turned the heating on in his one-bedroom flat just twice so far this year to avoid spiking energy costs and compensate for a 50% increase in his weekly supermarket bill.

He says he “was in a mess” when he first reached out to the Baseline Centre in January for welfare advice, as he was dealing with mobility challenges and craved a sense of community.

“I was so ashamed and embarrassed, but I had to cry out for help,” he says. “I needed help and I just didn’t know where to turn to. If I’m totally honest, I’m very lonely.”

Richardson suggests the need for warm banks is a result of government inaction.

“I think that it highlights just how far removed our government is right now from the reality of real life. I think it screams … the divide between us and them, it’s only getting wider,” she says. “We keep referring to this as a cost of living crisis, as though it’s a period of time we’re going to go through and we will come out the other side. Will we? It’s life or death.”

Energy prices have soared across Europe since fall 2021, driven in part by Russia’s war in Ukraine. But UK energy prices rose more sharply than in comparable economies such as France and Italy, analysts told CNN Business this summer.

In November, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt announced higher taxes and reduced public spending in an effort to heave the country out of a recession forecast to last just over a year and shrink its economy by just over 2%, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. The UK is the only G7 economy that remains smaller than it was before the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The UK government also announced an Energy Bill Support Scheme worth £400 per eligible household, which will partially subsidize domestic energy bills from winter 2022 to 2023, as well as providing extra financial support to help pensioners pay their heating costs this winter under the Winter Fuel Payment scheme.

In December more than one million households with prepayment meters did not redeem their monthly energy support vouchers – included in the government’s Energy Bill Support Scheme – the BBC reported.

But Michael Marmot, a lead researcher in epidemiology and health inequalities, says years of austerity, paltry government support, cuts to spending on social welfare and infrastructure, and a lack of regulation in the UK’s energy market have plunged millions into fuel poverty.

“Poverty has been building up over the last dozen years and getting worse,” says Marmot, director of University College London’s Institute of Health Equity.

“We look the worst in G7 countries, we’re the only one in terms of recovery … that hasn’t gone back to where we were pre-pandemic. This is mismanagement on a colossal scale.”

An estimated 3.69 million households in the UK were in fuel poverty as of December 2020 compared with 6.99 million households in December 2022, Simon Francis, who coordinates the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, told CNN.

This figure is set to steadily increase, with more than three-quarters of UK households – 53 million people – forecast to be in fuel poverty by the new year, according to research by the University of York in northern England.

The human rights organization Save the Children has distributed 2,344 direct grants to low-income families in the UK in the past year, the Guardian reported. The head of the charity also called on the government to provide more support for families, as it predicts acute financial hardship for millions in January.

“What do you want a well-functioning society to do? At the minimum, people should be able to eat, to feed their families, have a safe dwelling … and a safe dwelling includes one that’s warm enough,” Marmot adds.

Susan Aitken, leader of Glasgow City Council in Scotland, says warm banks are “not a solution” to the cost of living crisis but rather “an emergency service.” The council has established more than 30 warm banks across the city in spaces including church halls, libraries, sports venues and cafes, and that number is expected to increase, according to Aitken. The service runs on council budgets and charitable donations.

“The solution is for people to be able to stay in their own homes,” she says.

“It’s bad enough that food banks have become a permanent fixture of communities across the UK now. To have places that people have to go to because they can’t afford to heat their own home is an absolute indictment (of government policy).”

CNN has reached out to the UK government for comment, but it did not respond.

Back at the Oasis Centre, locals show up for anything from knitting circles to after-school clubs offering free hot meals.

Steve Chalke, the hub’s founder, says about 200 people use the facility daily for warmth. He says that he does not advertise the service as a warm bank because it is “dehumanizing.” Instead, he coordinates community-led events that are held in warm venues across the city.

“The idea is to not inquire and to not ask,” he says. “It’s stigmatizing and it’s traumatizing, you know, so you end up feeling a non-person. So we want to take away that stigma in every way we can.”

Francis, the End Fuel Poverty Coalition coordinator, says one of the most significant challenges to curbing fuel poverty is removing the taboo that people may feel when asking for support.

“I think one of the problems with fuel poverty … is it is quite a hidden form of poverty. People kind of … try and cover it up and try and get by,” he says. “We’re not going to know the full extent of the pain that people are suffering this winter, because there will be ways that people will disguise what it is that they’re doing.”

The mental health costs of fuel poverty are far-reaching, according to a 2020 report from the UCL Institute of Health Equity. The report said that young people living in cold homes are seven times more likely to have symptoms of poor mental health compared with those living in warm homes.

“There’s surprisingly lots of people that do have work, but yet it’s not enough to keep afloat, at least without needing some help,” says Bintu Tijani, a mother-of-four who goes to the Oasis Centre at least three times a week to warm up. “It’s having a significant impact on people’s wellbeing, mental health and wellbeing.”

Looking ahead to Christmas and the New Year, Francis says he is also concerned about the strain that treatment needed for medical conditions exacerbated or caused by cold weather will have on Britain’s National Health Service (NHS).

“We’re still calling for the government to realize that if it doesn’t take action to support those who are the most vulnerable … it is going to see a huge increase in the number of people turning up at the NHS’ door to seek help because of the fact that they are now living in a cold, damp home and it is making them sick,” he says.

Britain’s NHS is already under pressure amid staff shortages, historic nurses’ strikes over poor pay and working conditions, and a backlog of treatments resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.

Aitken, the councilor in Glasgow, believes this Christmas will “be a pretty miserable time” for many.

“A Christmas where you have to ration how long you can put your heating on in your home is not a good Christmas for anyone.”

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December 24, 2022
Brexit has cracked Britain’s economic foundations | CNN Business

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London
CNN
—

It’s been two years since former Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed his Brexit trade deal and triumphantly declared that Britain would be “prosperous, dynamic and contented” after completing its exit from the European Union.

The Brexit deal would enable UK companies to “do even more business” with the European Union, according to Johnson, and would leave Britain free to strike trade deals around the world while continuing to export seamlessly to the EU market of 450 million consumers.

In reality, Brexit has hobbled the UK economy, which remains the only member of the G7 — the group of advanced economies that also includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — with an economy smaller than it was before the pandemic.

Years of uncertainty over the future trading relationship with the European Union, Britain’s largest trading partner, have damaged business investment, which in the third quarter was 8% below pre-pandemic levels despite a UK-EU trade deal being in place for nearly two years.

And the pound has taken a beating, making imports more expensive and stoking inflation while failing to boost exports, even as other parts of the world have enjoyed a post-pandemic trade boom.

Brexit has erected trade barriers for UK businesses and foreign companies that used Britain as a European base. It’s weighing on imports and exports, sapping investment and contributing to labor shortages. All this has exacerbated Britain’s inflation problem, hurting workers and the business community.

“The most plausible reason as to why Britain is doing comparatively worse than comparable countries is Brexit,” according to L. Alan Winters, co-director of the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy at the University of Sussex.

The sense of gloom hanging over the UK economy is captured by striking workers, who are walking out in ever larger numbers over pay and conditions as the worst inflation in decades eats into their wages. At the same time, the government is cutting spending and hiking taxes to fill the hole in its budget.

While Brexit isn’t the cause of Britain’s cost-of-living crisis, it has made the problem more difficult to solve.

“The UK chose Brexit in a referendum, but the government then chose a particularly hard form of Brexit, which maximized the economic cost,” said Michael Saunders, a senior adviser at Oxford Economics and former Bank of England official. “Any hope for economic upside from Brexit is pretty much gone.”

Although Britain voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, its exit from the single market and customs union was finalized only on December 24, 2020, when the two sides finally agreed a free trade deal.

The Brexit deal, known as the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, came into effect on January 1, 2021.

It eliminated tariffs on most goods but introduced a raft of non-tariff barriers, such as border controls, customs checks, import duties and health inspections on plant and animal products.

Before Brexit, a farmer in Kent could ship a truckload of potatoes to Paris just as easily as they might send it to London. Those days are no more.

“We hear stories every single day from small businesses about the nightmare of forms, transportation, couriers, things getting stuck for weeks at a time… the epic length of the problems is just gobsmacking,” said Michelle Ovens, the founder of Small Business Britain, a campaign group.

“The way things have panned out in the last two years has been really bad for small businesses,” Ovens told CNN.

Researchers at the London School of Economics estimate that the variety of UK products exported to the European Union declined by 30% during the first year of Brexit. They said that this was likely because small exporters had exited small EU markets.

Take the example of Little Star, a UK company that makes jewelry for children. Its business took off in the Netherlands and it had plans to expand to France and Germany next. But since Brexit, only two of more than 30 of its Dutch customers are prepared to handle the costs and paperwork to obtain stock from the company.

Products that took two days to ship are now taking three weeks, while import duties and sales taxes have made it much harder to compete with European jewelers, according to Rob Walker, who co-founded the business with his wife, Vicky, in 2017. The company is now looking to the United States for growth opportunities.

“Isn’t it mad that we have to look to the other side of the Atlantic to do business, because it’s so difficult to do business with people 30 miles away?” Walker said.

A British Chambers of Commerce survey of more than 1,168 businesses published this month reported that 77% said Brexit has not helped them increase sales or grow their businesses. More than half said they were finding it difficult to adapt to the new rules for trading goods.

Siteright Construction Supplies, a manufacturer in Dorset, told the Chamber that importing parts from the European Union to fix broken machines has become a costly and “time-consuming nightmare.”

“Brexit has been the biggest-ever imposition of bureaucracy on business,” according to Siteright.

Nova Dog Chews, a producer of snacks for canines, said it would have lost all its EU trade had it not set up a base in the bloc. “This has cost our business a huge amount of money, which could have been invested in the UK had it not been for Brexit,” it added.

A UK government spokesperson told CNN that the government’s export support service has provided exporters with “practical support” on the implementation of the Brexit deal. The deal is “the world’s largest zero tariff, zero quota free trade deal,” the spokesperson added. “It secures the UK market access across key service sectors and opens new opportunities for UK businesses across the globe.”

Britain won’t easily replace what it has lost by forfeiting unfettered access to the world’s largest trading bloc.

The only substantive new trade deals it has struck since exiting the European Union, which did not simply roll over the deals it had as an EU member, have been with Australia and New Zealand. By the government’s own estimate, these will have a negligible impact on the UK economy, increasing GDP in the long run by just 0.1% and 0.03% respectively.

By contrast, the UK Office for Budget Responsibility, which produces economic forecasts for the government, expects Brexit to reduce Britain’s output by 4% over 15 years compared to remaining in the bloc. Exports and imports are projected to be around 15% lower in the long run.

Initial data has borne this out. According to the OBR, in the fourth quarter of 2021, UK goods export volumes to the European Union were 9% below 2019 levels, with imports from the European Union 18% lower. Goods exports to non-EU countries were 18% weaker than in 2019.

The United Kingdom “appears to have become a less trade-intensive economy, with trade as a share of GDP falling 12% since 2019, two and a half times more than in any other G7 country,” the OBR said in the March report.

The decline in exports to non-EU countries could be a sign that UK businesses have become less competitive as they battle higher supply chain costs following Brexit, according to Jun Du, an economics professor at Aston University in Birmingham.

“The UK’s trading ability has been damaged permanently [by Brexit],” Du told CNN. “It doesn’t mean it can’t recover, but it’s been set back for a number of years.”

Research by the Centre for European Reform, a think tank, estimates that over the 18 months to June 2022, UK goods trade is 7% lower than it would have been had Britain remained in the European Union.

Investment is 11% weaker and GDP is 5.5% smaller than it would have been, costing the economy £40 billion ($48.4 billion) in tax revenues annually. That’s enough to pay for three quarters of the spending cuts and tax rises that UK finance minister Jeremy Hunt announced in November.

The United Kingdom is projected to have one of the worst performing economies next year among developed nations.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development expects the UK economy to shrink by 0.4%, ahead only of sanctioned Russia. GDP in Germany is forecast to be 0.3% smaller.

The International Monetary Fund forecasts growth of just 0.3% for UK GDP next year, ahead of only Germany, Italy and Russia, which are expected to contract.

Both institutions say high inflation and rising interest rates will weigh on spending by consumers and businesses in Britain.

According to the Confederation of British Industry, a leading business group, the fall in private sector activity picked up pace in December and has now declined for five consecutive quarters.

The downward trend “looks set to deepen” in 2023, principal economist at the CBI Martin Sartorius said in a statement.

“Businesses continue to face a number of headwinds, with rising costs, labor shortages, and weakening demand contributing to a gloomy outlook for next year. ”

— Julia Horowitz contributed to this report.

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December 24, 2022
They were welcomed into British homes. Celebrating their first Christmas together, Ukrainians wonder if that hospitality will last | CNN

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Henley-on-Thames, England
CNN
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Last year, Nataliia Doroshko, a 35-year-old lawyer, celebrated St. Nicholas Day with friends and family in her home city of Cherkasy, on the snowy banks of the Dnipro River, downstream from the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

During the party, one of the men snuck away and returned dressed as St. Nicholas, a Santa Claus-like figure known as “Sviatyij Mykolai” in Ukraine, she recalled. He was greeted by wide-eyed children, who lined up eagerly to see what gifts he’d brought for them. It was one of the last joyful evenings Doroshko remembers sharing with loved ones before Russia invaded Ukraine and her world turned upside down.

“We had special food, special music, presents for everybody,” she told CNN from a church hall in Henley-on-Thames, a town upstream from London, in Oxfordshire, where she was marking the holiday on December 19.

More than 100 people – a mix of Ukrainian refugees, host families, local residents and teachers – had gathered at the small hall, decked out in strands of snowflake-shaped lights. The vicar was serving drinks, as others dolled out cookies and cakes. One Ukrainian father had donned a red and gold St. Nicholas costume, while children dressed in Christmas sweaters played musical chairs and laughed.

“We’ve celebrated a festival we don’t usually celebrate,” said Krish Kandiah, the man behind the event, who earlier this year launched the Sanctuary Foundation, an organization that helps match Ukrainian refugees with British host families. “It’s been brilliant that the community has welcomed Ukrainians.”

Doroshko, who was sponsored by Kandiah, came across him by chance. While on a packed train trying to flee the fighting, she was scrolling on her phone searching for refugee schemes. She saw him in a YouTube video announcing the launch of a British program called “Homes for Ukraine,” which would allow Ukrainians to travel to the UK if they could find a sponsor. She immediately reached out, asking for help. Five minutes later, Kandiah gave her a call.

“Unfortunately, we were unable to talk, as my English level was close to zero,” said Doroshko, who is now nearly fluent. Over several weeks, with the help of Google Translate, Kandiah assisted her to secure a visa and travel to the UK. She has been living with him, his wife and their six children since May.

As of mid-December, more than 100,000 Ukrainians have arrived in Britain under the Homes for Ukraine sponsorship scheme, while another 42,600 have come stay with relatives, according to the UK government. When the scheme started in March, families were asked to commit to a minimum of six months of hosting. But that period has now elapsed for many Ukrainians who arrived in the spring.

CNN spoke with eight Ukrainian refugees and nine British hosts, as well as UK charities helping to support the scheme, to get a sense of what’s next as the war stretches on, with Russia’s relentless attacks on Ukraine’s power grid threatening to trigger a fresh wave of refugees this winter. An elderly Ukrainian couple that arrived in the UK on December 1, fleeing the conflict and freezing cold, sat together in the corner of the church hall, speaking quietly and letting the festivities sink in. More are expected to join them in the coming weeks.

For Ukrainians spending their first Christmas in their new homes, it was comforting to celebrate old traditions. But, while the room was brimming with good will for the holidays, there was a palpable sense of uncertainty about the year ahead.

Many are unsure how long they will be welcome in their new homes and whether the six-month “deadline” will cast them out on the street. While many Britons signed up to the scheme are happy to continue hosting for as long as necessary, others are hoping to find a more permanent arrangement for both parties. Some say they’ve “done their bit” and simply want their lives back, but are unclear on an exit strategy.

“Two years is a very long time to have somebody living in your house,” one host told CNN.

Currently, the UK government gives host families £350 ($425) a month in “thank you” payments to help cover costs, regardless of the number of people they host. But, for most people CNN spoke with, the major incentive to sign up to the scheme was getting the chance to help – not any sort of monetary gain.

“Frankly, it’s enhanced our lives,” said Robert Aitkin, 76. He and his wife sponsored Oleksandra, who goes by Sasha, and Igor Kuzmenko along with their 2-year-old daughter, Miroslava, and host the young family at their home in Henley-on-Thames. Sasha’s sister has also moved to the Oxfordshire town with her son, who was only a couple of months old when the war broke out.

The families, who came together to the St. Nicholas party, have forged a relationship they say will last a lifetime. And while they initially agreed to the living arrangement for one year, Aitkin said if the Kuzmenkos need more time, “we would definitely do that.”

But not everyone is willing or able to keep their doors open indefinitely. The Aitkins have an apartment attached to their house, so the Kuzmenkos live separately from them. For those with less space, stretching past six months might pose a challenge. “People have made a great gesture at the beginning, but if they’re living in a small space together, it’s got to be difficult for both parties,” Aitkin acknowledged.

With those difficulties in mind, Kandiah’s Sanctuary Foundation started a petition calling on the government to provide more housing support to Ukrainians struggling with accommodation. Kandiah and a group of Ukrainian refugees went to 10 Downing Street on November 29 to hand deliver the petition, signed by more than 4,500 people.

Two weeks later, the government acknowledged the need to support British families who had welcomed Ukrainians into their homes, increasing the monthly stipend to £500 for those who have hosted for over a year. The government also rolled out a £650 million support package, which includes funding for local authorities to help support Ukrainian refugees move into their own homes, acquire additional housing stock and reduce the risk of homelessness.

CNN asked Oxfordshire County Council, which oversees Henley-on-Thames, what help they currently offer Ukrainian refugees who find themselves without a place to stay. “We will do everything we can to continue to provide suitable accommodation for guests, but longer-term housing options may not be possible within the county for everyone who needs it,” a communications officer told CNN.

In the absence of long-term options through local councils, British charities are looking into creative solutions to re-house refugees. One possibility being floated is “re-hosting,” something Kandiah says is akin to “sofa-surfing.” But he worries that if Britons weren’t interested in helping out when the war started, they’re unlikely to do so now.

Part of the problem is that Ukrainian refugees have begun to put down roots in places they can’t necessarily afford, as most of their hosts live in expensive areas. On top of that, Ukrainians have been unable to find comparable work and wages to what they were making before the war, so the steep cost of rent is out of reach.

Many Ukrainians CNN spoke with said they feel frustrated that their qualifications do not translate over. Natasha, who was a lawyer in Cherkasy now she works in a retail store. Another woman, Tania Orlova, 45, was a clinical psychologist in Kyiv and also ran a number of her own businesses; now she works for a local charity in High Wycombe, a town in Buckinghamshire.

Orlova, who speaks several languages, said she could have gone elsewhere in Europe – Spain or Germany, for example – but felt that the UK offered her the best future for her son, Danylo, 8, and her mother, 67, and the chance of becoming “financially independent.” But so far that hasn’t happened, and as a 10-month timeline that she agreed with her hosts approaches, she’s becoming more anxious about where they will go.

When Orlova calls real estate agents, she said that they all start with the same question: “What is your salary?” After a quick calculation, they tell her what she is eligible for. “I couldn’t take anything within that price that would suit three of us – or even two of us,” she said. The median monthly rent for a three-bedroom apartment in Oxfordshire is £1,295, according to the latest figures from the UK’s Office for National Statistics.

The UK government started the Homes for Ukraine scheme in the wake of its disastrous Afghan resettlement program. In August, a year after fleeing the Taliban’s takeover of the country, thousands of Afghan asylum seekers and refugees were still living in UK hotels at a cost of more than £5 million a day, according to the government. While the program offered permanent residency, it has only been granted to a few thousand so far.

Ukrainians have received a warmer welcome than other groups of refugees in the UK, but a cloud of impermanence hangs over their stay. The visa for Ukrainians is only valid for three years, with the expectation that they will return home afterward. And though many want to return, for those who can’t or are unable to, their future in the UK is uncertain.

“The people who planned to go back as quickly as possible [to Ukraine] would not have made the quite considerable journey to the UK, gone through the whole rigmarole of the visa process, found a sponsor, gone to the most distant part of Europe – and then only settle there for a short time,” said Stanislav Benes, managing director of Opora – which means “support” in Ukrainian – another charity that helps match Ukrainians with British host families.

“There needs to be much more thought dedicated to, what are the support structures going to be between year one and year three?” he added.

While hosts were aware of the steep costs and cultural differences they might be confronted with when they decided to host Ukrainian refugees, they were less prepared for taking on the mental stress and anguish that their guests were still grappling with.

Orlova told CNN that support is urgently needed for Ukrainians, like herself, who are still wracked with the trauma of the conflict. She said she recently went to a local hospital for an X-ray and the noises from the machine sparked a flashback. Suddenly she was back in Ukraine hearing the wail of the sirens on the morning of the invasion. “I wanted to run from there. I had tears in my eyes,” she said.

Her son Danylo has suffered from night terrors since the war began. At the St. Nicholas celebration, the organizers removed balloons from the church hall after someone pointed out that children might panic if one of them was to pop.

In order to properly recover and regain their sense of self, Kandiah said that Ukrainians will need a space they can truly call their own. “You need to be able to close the front door and say, ‘We’re a family. We can choose what language we’re going to speak, what we’re going to eat.’ That’s part of trauma recovery – having agency, the ability to make decisions.”

But until then, Kandiah said his own family is happy to help with the healing process and make Doroshko feel at home. Bortsch, perogies and holubtsi, a Ukrainian stuffed cabbage dish, are now staple meals in their household. And Kandiah has swapped cough drops for a Ukrainian practice of drinking hot beer to cure a sore throat, just one of many cultural exchanges.

Doroshko said she is relieved to no longer have to travel around with an “emergency suitcase” and worry about being woken by sirens. “I lost my parents when I was 20 years old,” she said. “Now I feel that I have a family again. I was adopted, as it were, only in adulthood.”

Christmas Eve is celebrated on January 6 in Ukraine. Last year, Doroshko said she celebrated with an old tradition: writing a “dream” down on a piece of paper before burning it, pouring the ashes into a glass, and drinking it. “It makes your dreams come true,” said Doroshenko.

What is she wishing for this year? “Peace.”

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December 23, 2022
UK wages next year will be at their lowest level since 2006, report says | CNN Business

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London
CNN
—

Brits hoping for a new-year salary bump to offset soaring food and energy costs may be disappointed.

The average British worker’s pay in 2023 is expected to fall back to 2006 levels once inflation is taken into account, according to PwC. Real wages, which factor in inflation, are expected to fall by as much as 3% in 2022 and another 2% in 2023, PwC has predicted in a report on the UK economy shared with CNN.

The report confirms that wages have stagnated in Britain even as inflation hits double digits, sparking the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades. That’s led to widespread strikes across the UK economy, encompassing railways, schools, nurses, hospitals and the postal service.

On Friday, passport officers began eight days of strikes that are expected to hit some of the United Kingdom’s busiest airports over Christmas and New Year, including Heathrow and Gatwick in London. The government said in a statement that the military would be supporting Border Force but warned travelers to expect delays and disruptions on arrival in Britain.

“2022 has obviously been a highly challenging year for the UK economy, and it is not surprising that these chilly headwinds will continue throughout 2023,” Barret Kupelian, a senior economist at PwC said in a statement.

The report offered some hope. Despite the hit to wages, more than 300,000 UK workers could rejoin the labor market in 2023, reducing economic inactivity and alleviating staff shortages in highly skilled sectors, according to PwC. At the same time, increased immigration to the UK could directly contribute £19 billion ($23 billion) to the economy, boosting GDP growth by 1% “even as the whole economy contracts,” PwC said.

“Despite a contracting economy, the UK remains an attractive destination for workers,” PwC economist Jake Finney said in a statement. UK immigration levels reached a record 1.1 million in 2022, with resettlement programs aimed at Ukrainians, Afghans and Hong Kong residents adding around 140,000 to the total, according to PwC.

Even with record immigration, the United Kingdom has lagged behind developed nations in its post-Covid employment recovery. Vacancies hit a record 1.3 million earlier in the year, dropping to just under 1.2 million in November. Worker shortages have been particularly acute in the hospitality, retail and agriculture industries.

Research by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee published this week concluded that early retirement has been the biggest driver of the squeeze on the UK workforce. Increasing long-term sickness, lower EU migration following Brexit and an aging UK population have also played a role.

“The rise in inactivity poses serious challenges to the UK economy. Shortage of labor exacerbates the current inflationary challenge; damages growth in the near term; and reduces the revenues available to finance public services, while demand for those services continues to grow,” the committee said.

PwC’s Kupelian added that UK inflation likely peaked in October and “will gradually begin to return to target over the next two years.”

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December 23, 2022