Category Archives: Society

Dismay as key cholera vaccine is discontinued

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Exclusive: halt to production of Shanchol vaccine alarms WHO amid ‘unprecedented’ global outbreaks

The manufacturer of one of only two cholera vaccines for use in humanitarian emergencies is to halt production at the end of this year, just as the world faces an “unprecedented” series of deadly outbreaks, the Guardian has learned.

Shantha Biotechnics, a wholly owned Indian subsidiary of the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi, will stop production of its Shanchol vaccine within months and cease supply by the end of 2023, causing alarm among health officials.

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Why global investors are piling into the UK’s luxury care home sector

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With people aged 65 and over controlling 51% of Britain’s wealth, the logic for investors is simple

• Canadian owners of care homes avoided UK taxes, researchers claim

With a spa, cinema and wood-panelled hall, Reigate Grange in Surrey, where Ann King was abused, is part of a growing trend for luxury care homes. Fuelled by global investors’ desire to capitalise on older people’s property wealth, luxury care applies a cruise-ship sheen to the grittier reality of dementia and the end of life.

The logic for investors is simple. People aged 65 and over in the UK now control 51% of Britain’s wealth, up from 42% in 2008, the year of the financial crash, according to the Resolution Foundation. A large minority of older people can afford £100,000-a-year care home fees because they have houses worth far more that they no longer need. A person in a £1m home who survives for the typical two years of a care home resident would still leave £800,000 in their will.

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Another U-turn looms – how much will it save and what else could the chancellor ditch?

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Corporation tax plans likely to be latest to be dropped – bad news for Kwarteng’s credibility, but good for his balance sheet

Liz Truss is on the verge of reversing one of the last major pillars of her chancellor’s disastrous September mini-budget.

While Kwasi Kwarteng mingles with finance ministers at the International Monetary Fund gathering in Washington DC, discussions are taking place in London that would see the promise to freeze corporation tax rates binned. There is also speculation about dropping smaller measures including a more generous tax treatment of share dividends. These U-turns would come hard on the heels of the humiliating climbdown on Kwarteng’s promise to scrap the 45p top rate of tax.

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‘It’s a revolution’: Iranian women in UK believe protests will bring freedom

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Women who fled regime are working hard to expose abuses in Iran and say this time real change is possible

Iranian and Kurdish women living in the UK believe the prospect of freedom for millions of women in their home country has never been greater following protests after the death of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested in Tehran for not wearing her headscarf correctly.

Many of those who fled the Iranian regime because of its attacks on human and women’s rights are working hard behind the scenes to support women in their home country to expose the abuses in the hope of encouraging the international community to act to bring about regime change.

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Four out of five pupils in England say progress suffered due to Covid

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State school pupils twice as likely to feel they have fallen behind than peers in private schools, landmark study finds

Four out of five teenagers say their academic progress has suffered as a result of the pandemic, with state school pupils twice as likely to feel they have fallen behind than their peers in private schools, according to initial findings from a landmark study.

Half of the 16- and 17-year-olds questioned said the Covid disruption had left them less motivated to study, while 45% felt they have not been able to catch up with lost learning.

There was a lot of chaos in my life at the time and then we went into lockdown quite unprepared. There was a lot of confusion about schooling. I didn’t really have access to technology. I didn’t have online lessons, things like that. There was work that went on every week, but I couldn’t access it because I didn’t have the internet. I remember talking to one of my friends and they were like, ‘Oh have you seen the work that’s been put for English’, and I was like, ‘We have work?’

It was only in the September when we came back I finally got more support. I got a laptop and I got better access. A lot of people in my school had issues like me. A lot of people didn’t have technology or they didn’t have structured lessons, so we’ve had a lot to try to catch up on. A lot of the lessons have been quite content-heavy because it felt like we were trying to do two years in one, so that was quite stressful. And I felt like I had to work harder to do my GCSEs. I felt I had to do more to recover to my peers’ level.

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Poorer families risk £1,000 hit from earnings-related benefits rise

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Below-inflation rise would save exchequer tenth of £40bn to be given out through tax cuts, says thinktank

If the government raises benefits in line with earnings rather than inflation next year, it would drastically cut the incomes of poorer working-age families, while saving less than a tenth of the cost of recent tax cuts, a leading economic thinktank has calculated.

Such a change, which would mean a significant real-terms cut given that wages are rising at 5.5% with inflation close to 10%, could see the effective income of some families reduced by up to £1,000 a year, the Resolution Foundation said.

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Liz Truss insists tax cuts will go ahead despite public spending promise

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PM suggests borrowing will rise as she surprises MPs by saying she has no plans to cut public spending

Liz Truss has said the Conservatives will push ahead with tax cuts without cutting public spending, instead allowing borrowing to rise over the next few years.

Senior economists had warned on Wednesday that such a strategy, if set out by Kwasi Kwarteng in the chancellor’s fiscal plan at the end of this month, would be likely to spook investors, creating renewed market turmoil.

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First ever amber alert for NHS blood supplies could mean cancelled surgery

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Hospitals ordered to protect stocks as they fall to critical level amid shortage of staff to take donations

The NHS has declared its first ever amber alert over blood supplies after they fell to a critically low level, prompting warnings that hospitals in England may be forced to cancel operations to protect their stocks.

An NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) official confirmed that overall blood stocks in NHS England were at three days’ worth and levels of O-type had dropped to less than two days’. The normal standard is to hold at least six days’ worth of blood in stock at all times.

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Lockdown babies slower to meet some milestones, study finds

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Irish research shows infants were slightly less likely to speak, point or wave at 12 months but were more likely to crawl

Babies born during the first lockdown met fewer developmental milestones aged one compared with those born before the pandemic – although they may have been faster to crawl, data suggests.

About 600,000 babies were born in Britain, and a further 60,000 in Ireland, during 2020 – when Covid restrictions and mask wearing put a stop to many social activities, including toddler rhyme-times, antenatal group outings and cuddles with grandparents. Since then, parents and psychologists have pondered the impact of such enforced isolation on babies’ social development.

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Carbon monoxide leak in Pennsylvania daycare sickens dozens, including kids

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Unconscious children rushed to hospital but are now stable, weeks before new CO detector law goes into effect in Allentown

A malfunctioning heater sent a dangerously high level of carbon monoxide into a Pennsylvania daycare center early Tuesday, sickening dozens of children – some of whom were unconscious as they were rushed to the hospital – and several adults.

More than 30 people were hospitalized. All were listed in stable condition.

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Children’s commissioner demands ambition, not ‘tinkering’, in childcare reform

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Dame Rachel de Souza says No 10’s focus on carer-to-child ratios is ‘depressing’ and now is the time to redefine childcare

The children’s commissioner for England has poured cold water on Liz Truss’s proposal to scrap regulations governing child-to-staff ratios in nurseries, describing it as tinkering around the edges and calling instead for ambitious and transformative reform of the childcare sector.

In an interview with the Guardian, Dame Rachel de Souza said children’s safety and wellbeing must be “paramount” in any plans to reform childcare and she said she thought it was “really depressing” if the current conversation about childcare focused purely on ratios.

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One in five families in Liz Truss’s seat would lose out under real-term benefit cuts

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Research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows impact of increasing benefits in line with earnings, not inflation

At least one in five working-age families in most UK constituencies – including in Liz Truss’s seat – would lose out by hundreds of pounds on average if real-terms benefit cuts go ahead, a study has found.

The scale of the impact of a below-inflation rise on already struggling households and by extension, local shops and businesses, is revealed in a study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF). It would amount to the biggest-ever real terms cut to benefits in a single year.

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Half of poorest countries have cut health spending despite Covid, says Oxfam

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Analysis of budgets finds rich nations, including UK, ‘exacerbated explosion of economic inequality’

Many of the world’s poorest countries have cut health spending during the last two years, sometimes to make debt repayments to rich creditors, according to a report by Oxfam that shows inequality between rich and poor nations worsening during the coronavirus pandemic.

Analysis of national budgets across 161 nations found that despite the biggest global health emergency in a century, half of low- and lower-middle-income countries cut health spending, while almost half cut their welfare budgets and almost three-quarters cut education spending.

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England’s social care workforce shrinks for first time in 10 years

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Experts say loss of 50,000 workers exposes ‘absolute crisis’ facing system still reeling from impact of Covid and Brexit

The social care workforce has shrunk for the first time in almost a decade despite rising demand and bed congestion in hospitals fuelled by a lack of care places.

England is projected to need close to 500,000 more care staff by the middle of the next decade, but last year there was a net fall in the workforce of 50,000 people, leaving about 165,000 jobs vacant, according to new figures from Skills for Care.

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Gunshots and blasts heard at Mahsa Amini protests in Iran

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Government officials struggle to end demonstrations sparked by death in police custody of Kurdish woman

Gunshots and explosions were heard in the Iranian Kurdish city of Sanandaj on Monday as the protests over the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini continued to unfold across the country and for first time spread to Iran’s crucial oil industry.

Government officials are struggling to end the protests led by young Iranians, especially women, previously regarded as uninterested by politics.

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UK’s lost leadership role hurts Somalia’s fight against famine, says drought envoy

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Britain is no longer the key humanitarian player and ‘great ally’ it once was, says envoy trying to get support for Somalia’s drought

The UK has lost its leadership role in the world and is letting down its allies, a senior official in the Somali government has said.

Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame, the presidential envoy for Somalia’s drought response, said Britain used to be second only to the US as a key player in international forums and advocacy, but has since slipped, saying that countries such as Somalia were being left without support to face “the new climate reality”.

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Raw sewage in living room among complaints heard by property tribunal

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Guardian analysis of hundreds of documents also finds complaints of rodents, bed bugs, overcrowding and fire safety issues

Raw sewage leaking into a living room, rodents, bed bug and mite infestations, overcrowding and fire safety issues make up just some of the complaints levelled at rogue landlords in tribunal filings in the past year.

The findings come after the Guardian analysed hundreds of documents from the first-tier property tribunal involving tenants renting house-shares of five or more people (or three or more in parts of London) sharing kitchen and bathroom facilities, known as houses of multiple occupation or HMOs.

Raw sewage leaking from a toilet and seeping through the living room ceiling, which had to be collected in plastic containers.

Multiple properties that had no fire detection system or smoke alarm; lacked an adequate central heating system; had infestations of rodents, bed bugs and pigeon mites, which were not adequately dealt with.

A London landlord renting out a property through a company the tribunal found did not exist.

A converted church rented to students was inadequately secured after a burglary and the burglar was later found to be living in the attic. At the same property, a fire took place when smoke alarms were not working.

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Liz Truss on verge of major U-turn on real-terms benefits cut

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Exclusive: Tory MPs warn PM she would lose vote on increasing benefits only in line with earnings rather than inflation

Liz Truss is teetering on the edge of performing another big U-turn as Tory MPs warned she would lose a vote on delivering a real-terms cut to benefits while new research showed the move could push an extra 450,000 people into poverty.

Despite desperate pleas for party unity from senior ministers after weeks of bitter infighting, the row over welfare threatened to overshadow the prime minister’s attempt to reassert her authority when the Commons returns from recess on Tuesday.

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Government ‘burying head in sand’ over health inequality, says bishop of London

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Exclusive: UK’s most senior female bishop calls for long-awaited white paper promising ‘bold action’

The most senior female bishop in the country has launched a scathing attack on the government, accusing it of “burying its head in the sand” over “shocking” and “rampant” health inequalities.

Dame Sarah Mullally, the bishop of London, spoke out after the Guardian reported that Thérèse Coffey was dropping the government’s long-promised white paper on health disparities.

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Older people at risk from overcharging and mis-selling ‘scandal’

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Unnecessary policies and overpayments for services are draining the accounts of vulnerable customers

Elderly and vulnerable customers are being routinely overcharged by utility and insurance firms in a hidden scandal highlighted today by one of the country’s senior financial services executives. Unfair practices are putting them at risk of being unable to afford food and heating, he warns.

Michael Donald, a former director of Visa UK, said he was staggered to discover hundreds of pounds of overcharging when he carefully checked the direct debits on his 79-year-old mother’s accounts.

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