|
Newsletter
Issue 10
August-September 2002
|
||
|
News in brief
In what critics of the government have referred to as a ‘dangerous and foolish’ move, the government has bailed out the ailing nuclear giant British Energy (BE) with a £410m loan. The emergency funding is meant to keep BE afloat until 27th September, pending clarification of the group’s full financial position. BE is Britain’s largest electricity generator, providing around 20% of the nation’s power. The government claims that the bail-out was necessary, to ensure the safety of nuclear power stations and to maintain the security of electricity supply. Ministers are said to be furious that the company is appealing for government assistance, only months after paying out a large dividend to shareholders. The company is also being investigated by the Financial Services Authority, to determine whether BE misled investors when it reassured them about its financial health only three weeks ago. Whilst the bail-out may have bought the company a bit more time to sweet-talk the government, the fact remains that the economics of nuclear power just don’t add up. Despite cutting so many jobs in the UK that the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate voiced concerns that nuclear safety might be compromised, the company is still producing electricity at a loss. BE needs wholesale power prices of £19 per megawatt hour to break even, whilst UK prices have been around £16 for the past couple of months. The Tories have argued that the company should be exempted immediately from the Climate Change Levy (an environmental tax on polluters) and that ministers should also agree a deal to reduce its reprocessing costs. However, even this won’t save the company. Last year BE lost £518m. The Climate Change Levy costs the company £80m a year, and BE pays about £300m a year to the government owned BNFL for reprocessing. So even if the levy were dropped, and BNFL reprocessed BE’s fuel for free, the company would still be insolvent. Earlier this year BE’s Hinkley Point power station reached the news, when it was discovered that cancer rates in its vicinity are up to six times higher than the national average. Clusters of leukaemia have also been found close to Oldbury power station and Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant. Another fact to emerge earlier this year is that anti-radiation drugs are being stockpiled throughout the country, to be distributed in the event of a terrorist attack on an atomic power station or some other nuclear facility. Such trivial concerns have done little to dent UK Energy Minister, Brian Wilson’s enthusiasm for nuclear power. He sees nuclear energy as a vital part of the UK strategy to meet the carbon emissions reductions required by the Kyoto Protocol. Alternative ways to meet the Protocol, such as renewable energy and energy conservation measures, have received alarmingly little attention in comparison. One thing is for
certain, if the nuclear power industry is to survive in the UK it’ll
have to be at the tax-payer’s expense. The government therefore
has two options open to it. It can either put its failed nuclear experiment
to bed, or continue to subsidise an industry that threatens the health
and safety of the entire nation. So which is it, Brian? Bayer found guilty in Peruvian poisoning incident Following a nine-month
investigation, a Peruvian Congressional Subcommittee has issued its
final report on the deaths by pesticide The incident happened when the children drank a powdered milk substitute that had been contaminated with Bayer’s pesticide methyl parathion. In addition to the 24 dead, 18 other children were severely poisoned. The pesticide, known as ‘Folidol’ was sold as a white powder resembling powdered milk. It has no strong chemical odour and was packaged in small plastic bags that provided no protection to users. The bags were labelled in Spanish only (not the local language), and had no pictograms indicating danger or toxicity. The case was brought to trial by the families of the dead children. The families have also written to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan requesting that he exclude Bayer from the UN Global Compact, a UN partnership with corporations who pledge to abide by human rights and environmental principles. Source: Pesticide Action Network Latin America What really happened at the Earth Summit? The Earth Summit in Johannesburg is widely accepted as having been an unmitigated disaster. 65,000 delegates gathered from all corners of the globe to pledge a commitment to the future of the planet and to solving the problems of the worlds poor. Much lofty rhetoric was spoken and the phrase ‘sustainable development’ (so co-opted by business now that it has become practically meaningless) was repeated ad infinitum. What was really achieved was a sinister marriage of big business to the UN, governments, NGOs and the media. Whether this unholy alliance need mean the final nail in the coffin of the planet is up to individuals and communities all over the world to determine. Book
Review: As a researcher and campaigner on food and farming, I’d always considered the issue of foxhunting to be a distraction from the real issues plaguing rural communities today. This little book proved me wrong. In Britain, land ownership and political power have gone hand in hand over the centuries, with hereditary peerages meaning the country’s biggest landowners automatically qualified for political influence. But at the heart of this undemocratic relationship has been the aristocracy’s connection with hunting, and their desire for exclusive hunting grounds. It was William the Conqueror, renowned for his passion for stag and boar hunting, who originally began to set aside huge tracts of his new kingdom as his private playground, and handed out land to his noblemen for hunting. And they have enjoyed the right to rip apart small furry animals ever since. The Rich at Play contains articles to help orientate the reader within the foxhunting debate. Whilst touching on the animal rights issue, it mainly focuses on how foxhunting originated, why it has survived and the various groups now fighting to maintain it, especially the Countryside Alliance. This is predominantly a story of the injustice of land distribution in Britain, and the chapter, ‘No Ordinary Theft’, explains how access to information about land ownership has been deliberately covered up by large landowners since the 1870s due to their positions of political power in the House of Lords. The book also contains
a damning expose of the Countryside Alliance, highlighting how reality
jars with the propaganda that they are pushing. The Countryside Alliance
(CA) would never have been more than a pro-hunting group of miffed aristocrats
and businessmen, were it not for the accelerating crisis in farming
and rural communities. The CA has been astute enough to realise that
it needed to show some concern for genuine rural grievances in order
to gain a much larger audience for its pro-hunting views. As research by Corporate
Watch shows, the CA has recently been ‘disguising’ its key
interests by moving the peers and large landowners to more ‘behind
the scenes’ roles. They have also appointed non-hunting officers
to give the impression of a broad-based movement. However, one look
at its board of directors illustrates that they don’t really have
much expertise in the issues that they claim to care about, such as
rural poverty. Some of them are actively involved in perpetuating rural
poverty such as by selling off rural homes to wealthy commuters at over-inflated
prices. Likewise one of the alliance’s major donors, Persimmon
Homes, is involved in the destruction of greenfield land. The Rich at Play
is available from AK Press (www.akuk.com)
for £4. Schnews of the
World Big Bad World:
10 Years of Political Cartoons by Polyp And new from
Corporate Watch:
|
||
| 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 |