Category Archives: Inequality

Israeli ambassador protests as Iranian president speaks – as it happened

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The United Nations general assembly liveblog is now closed, but please see the following stories to stay on top of the day’s news:

Guterres says countries such as Russia are creating a “world of insecurity” for everyone following its invasion of Ukraine, which he says has “unleashed the next phase of our lives: historic human rights abuse, families torn apart, children traumatised, hopes and dreams shattered.”

The war in Ukraine has “serious implications” for the world beyond Kyiv, he says, pointing to the collapse of the Black Sea grain initiative.

The world badly needs Ukrainian food and Russian food and fertilisers to stabilise markets and guarantee food security.

Sudan is descending into full scale civil war. Millions have fled and the country risks splitting apart.

In eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, millions are displaced and gender based violence is a horrific daily reality in a country that suffered centuries of colonial exploitation, is today overwhelmed by gang violence and still awaits international support.

Authoritarianism is on the march, inequalities are growing, and hate speech is on the rise.

What we need is determination and determination which is in the DNA of our United Nations, summoning gods with the first words of the charter.

We the peoples of the United Nations, determined, determined to end the scourge of war, determined to reaffirm faith in human rights, determined to uphold justice and respect international law and determined to promote social progress and better lives for all people.

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‘It’s going to cost billions’: UK councils face huge bills over equal pay claims

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GMB union is supporting 3,000 claims in Birmingham – and is gathering evidence from 20 other councils

Councils in the UK are facing compensation bills running into billions of pounds over equal pay claims, campaigners have warned, as they called on the government to intervene.

The GMB union is supporting more than 3,000 equal pay claims against Birmingham city council, and has disputes against councils in Coventry, Westmorland, Cumberland, Glasgow, Dundee and Fife.

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Phoenix’s unhoused residents suffer through record heat even at night

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Only one cooling center remains open all night, when the concrete radiates heat stored during hellish daytime hours

Even after the sun sinks below the horizon in Phoenix, Arizona, the concrete cityscape continues to cook. In the midst of a record-breaking heatwave that’s kept daily highs above 110F (43.3C) for more than 18 consecutive days, the evening hours have offered little reprieve. For more than a week low temperatures breached 90F (32.2C), breaking a grim record recently set in 2020.

While the city is considered a leader in mitigating the dangers of extreme heat and has worked to secure widespread access to cooling centers and hydration stations during the scorching summer days, most facilities here close before nightfall. There’s only a single center that operates around the clock in a city of more than 1.6 million people, even as dangerous conditions grow more deadly – especially for those who can’t access overnight relief.

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Emmanuel Macron’s uphill battle to achieve ‘lasting order’ in deeply divided France

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Wave of unrest after teenager’s death leaves French president weighing pleas to tackle inequality against calls for tougher policing

Emmanuel Macron is facing the biggest domestic challenge of his fraught second term in office, after the police shooting of a teenager of Algerian origin at a traffic stop last week led to multiple nights of urban unrest.

The French president on Tuesday announced crisis funding to help the reconstruction of burned-out buildings and public services. But questions remain over deep divisions in French society and the political class.

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Paris climate finance summit fails to deliver debt forgiveness plan

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Countries in debt distress thrown financial lifeline but critics say measures fall short of what is needed

Poorer countries struggling with a growing debt crisis were thrown a lifeline at a global finance summit in Paris but the plans still fell short of the debt forgiveness programme that some had hoped for.

Progress was made on reforms that would help address the climate emergency, as nearly 40 world leaders and the heads of global institutions met in Paris for the summit, which ended on Friday.

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Who’s unhoused in California? Largest study in decades upends myths

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Most unhoused people are from in state and desire to find housing, while Black and older people are disproportionately affected

Nearly half of all unhoused adults in California are over the age of 50, with Black residents dramatically overrepresented, according to the largest study of the state’s homeless population in decades.

University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) research released on Tuesday also revealed that 90% of the population lost their housing in California, with 75% of them now living in the same county where they were last housed. The study further found that nearly nine out of 10 people reported that the cost of housing was the main barrier to leaving homelessness.

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UK business leader diversity has not increased since George Floyd death

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Nearly 70% of office workers say their firms have not increased number of black, Asian or ethnic minority leaders

The number of senior business leaders from ethnically diverse backgrounds has not significantly increased since the death of George Floyd sparked global protests and $50bn (£40bn) of corporate pledges to address racial inequality in the workplace.

Three years on from the killing of Floyd at the hands of US police officers, which prompted chief executives including Apple’s Tim Cook and David Solomon of Goldman Sachs to declare that leaders also need to do more to address racial disparities in their own companies, nearly 70% of office workers say their firms have not increased the number of black, Asian or ethnic minority leaders.

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How gentrified is your postcode? Search our map of Australia’s capital cities

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Exclusive: A third of suburbs in Sydney and Adelaide are already highly gentrified, and other capitals are on a similar trajectory

More than a third of Sydney and Adelaide suburbs and a quarter in Brisbane are affordable only to the most wealthy, and Hobart and Melbourne are following a similar path, analysis of census data on income and housing costs has found. Almost half of Darwin suburbs are either at risk or already well on the way to being “gentrified”, with a similar figure in Perth.

Researchers at the Australian Urban Observatory, who created a gentrification index from the data, say many of the areas most at risk of being gentrified are relatively recent greenfield areas in what were once outer suburbs, where many lower income families were able to find affordable housing. These families now run the risk of being displaced even farther afield.

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MPs call for action on pandemic-widened gap between England’s poor and rich pupils

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Public accounts committee warns that without more intervention, attainment gap could take decade to return to pre-Covid levels

It could take a decade for the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their wealthier peers to return to pre-pandemic levels in England without faster and more effective intervention, MPs have warned.

The estimate was made during evidence given to parliament’s influential public accounts committee (PAC) as part of its inquiry into education recovery after the disruption of Covid.

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Richer people pay more: California’s dramatic change to electricity bills

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Some higher-income residents – who already enjoy subsidies for solar – oppose paying more than low-income households

California will soon become the first state to determine residents’ electricity fees based on their income as part of a new effort to spur households toward full electrification and bring down the state’s soaring electricity costs for low-income Californians.

Electricity bills are made up of fixed costs as well as fees that vary based on the amount of electricity residents use. Last year, the state passed a law giving the California public utilities commission a 1 July 2024 deadline to determine a fixed charge for household electric bills based on people’s income.

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‘We give our blood so they live comfortably’: Sri Lanka’s tea pickers say they go hungry and live in squalor

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Top tea firms investigate as plantation workers say they have to pick 18kg a day but still skip meals and make their children work

Some of the world’s leading tea manufacturers, including Tetley and Lipton, are examining working conditions on the plantations of its Sri Lankan suppliers, following a Guardian investigation.

Two global trade-certification schemes, Fairtrade and the Rainforest Alliance, are also conducting inquiries after it was revealed that some workers on 10 certified estates could not afford to eat and were living in squalid conditions.

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Nearly half of those seeking Australian homelessness charity’s help have jobs but can’t pay soaring rents

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Mission Australia report finds demand for its services has jumped as CEO says government needs far more than ‘Band-Aid crisis solutions’

Four in 10 people who sought help from a major homelessness charity in the past three years were employed but could not meet skyrocketing rents, according to a report by Mission Australia.

The report comes as the demand for the organisation’s homelessness services, mainly based in New South Wales, jumped by 26% to 7,378 people between January 2020 to December last year.

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Wealthy firms buying Scottish land pose risk of greater inequality, study warns

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Commission says corporations and forestry companies competing for estates are driving up prices in already squeezed market

Land ownership in Scotland is at risk of becoming more elitist and unequal because wealthy corporations and forestry companies are dramatically driving up land prices, a new study has warned.

The report from the Scottish Land Commission found that a significant number of Highland estates and hill farms were sought by corporations last year as an investment or as sites for planting new conifer plantations.

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Labor’s cashless welfare bill criticised as disproportionately affecting First Nations people

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Critics claim the bill could see government further expand income management policies

Indigenous organisations and welfare advocates have blasted a government bill they say cements controversial cashless welfare policies that disproportionately affect First Nations people.

Labor abolished the cashless debit card that operated in several trial sites but has kept income management in the Northern Territory, where about 20,000 mostly Indigenous welfare recipients are forced on to the “basics card”.

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‘Latte line’: poverty rises in parts of Sydney as gap hardens between city’s east and west

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Exclusive: One in five renters are among 1 million living in poverty, according to New South Wales Council of Social Services

The “latte line” dividing Sydney’s western and eastern suburbs is hardening, with new research identifying deepening levels of poverty within already disadvantaged areas and groups.

A report commissioned by the New South Wales Council of Social Services (Ncoss) also found one in five renters are among more than 1 million people living in poverty in the state.

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Australia’s richest captured 93% of economic growth between 2009 financial crisis and Covid, paper shows

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Wealthiest 10% captured growth in company profits while most Australians watched their real wages shrink, Australia Institute finds

A new paper from the Australia Institute shows 93% of the benefits of economic growth between 2009 and 2019 went to the top 10%, while the bottom 90% received just 7%.

The paper shows the share of economic growth going to the top 10% over that period was far higher in Australia than in other developed countries, including the US and Canada.

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Majority-Black town fights to stop land being seized for gravel quarry rail link

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Residents of Sparta, Georgia, are trying to stop the Sandersville railroad and its influential owners from building a spur to a quarry

A majority-Black rural community in Georgia is battling to stop a railroad company from seizing private land for a new train line they say will cause environmental and economic harms.

Residents of Sparta, a poor community of 1,300 people located a hundred miles south-east of Atlanta, are opposing the construction of a rail spur that would connect a local quarry to the main train line, enabling the gravel company to vastly expand mining that already causes dust, debris and noise pollution.

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Budget pension shake-up is £4bn tax giveaway for wealthy, critics say

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Jeremy Hunt criticised for scrapping lifetime allowance and increasing annual contribution cap

The chancellor has been accused of unveiling a £4bn tax giveaway that will benefit the wealthiest people in the UK by dramatically increasing how much they can stash away in pensions while enjoying the full tax benefits.

Jeremy Hunt announced a major shake-up of the rules governing how much people can pay into their retirement pots, which will have no impact on the vast majority of the population but could lead to huge gains for the top few per cent of wealthy, older pension savers. Labour claimed it was a handout for “the richest 1%” and that someone with a £2m pension pot would pay up to £275,000 less in tax as a result.

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International Women’s Day 2023: events around the world – live

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Latest updates from the UK and across the globe as world marks International Women’s Day 2023

This is a really excellent comment piece from Nilanjana Bhowmick who argues that in India – like in much of the world – International Women’s Day has been captured by commerce.

IWD is not a spa voucher people!

Is it any wonder that Indian women end up doing almost 10 times more unpaid caregiving than Indian men? If International Women’s Day (IWD) is for taking stock of gender inequalities, let’s do that. If the government was interested in bringing change, it would announce women-friendly work policies. If businesses were serious, they would take a good look at how gender-responsive their organisations are, and make changes.

In Indian society, businesses have managed to dumb down an important day for putting out calls of action to demand political, economic and social equality for women.

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Almost 40% of domestic tasks could be done by robots ‘within decade’

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Chores such as shopping likely to have most automation, while caring for young or old least likely to be affected, says report

A revolution in artificial intelligence could slash the amount of time people spend on household chores and caring, with robots able to perform about 39% of domestic tasks within a decade, according to experts.

Tasks such as shopping for groceries were likely to have the most automation, while caring for the young or old was the least likely to be affected by AI, according to a large survey of 65 artificial intelligence (AI) experts in the UK and Japan, who were asked to predict the impact of robots on household chores.

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