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Parliament’s security experts slate British government pandemic planning

  For the past few months, a British group has campaigned for an emergency judge-led inquiry into the pandemic.   Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK   has not got very far: nothing has been offered beyond the promise of an inquiry at some time in the future. Now, though, a parliamentary report has been published which goes some way towards that aim. It comes from the rather grandly named Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy and is called ‘ Biosecurity and National Security ’. Because of its focus, the committee concentrates on the government’s preparedness for a pandemic, so it says little about the detailed handling, including the  outsourcing ,  creeping privatisation ,  chumocracy  and all the other criticisms, but it is still a remarkable document on two counts. The first is summarised in Friday’s 18th of December press release announcing the publication of the report, which was headed ‘ Government failed to act on its security ...
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Why you should stop buying new clothes

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Alana James, Northumbria University, Newcastle The fashion industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world, producing 20% of global wastewater and 10% of global carbon emissions – and it’s estimated that by 2050 this will have increased to 25% . A staggering 300,000 tonnes of clothes are sent to British landfills each year. The fast fashion business model, first developed in the early 2000s is responsible for the increase in consumer demand for high quantities of low-quality clothing. Many fashion products now being designed and made specifically for short-term ownership and premature disposal. Clothing quality is decreasing along with costs, and the increased consumption levels of mass-manufactured fashion products are pushing up the consumption of natural resources. The pressure to facilitate consumer hunger imposes significant social and environmental pressures on the manufacturing supply chain. The UK’s consumption levels of fashion are the highest...
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Are individualistic societies worse at responding to pandemics?

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UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently suggested that coronavirus infections are higher in the UK than Germany or Italy because Britons love freedom more, and find it harder to adhere to control measures. Unsurprisingly, this view has attracted a lot of criticism. Some have argued that Germany and Italy love freedom just as much as the UK. Others suggest the difference is down to the quality of these countries’ test and trace systems. There’s no hard evidence to prove Boris Johnson wrong, but across the Atlantic, economist Paul Krugman has suggested something similar. The US’s poor pandemic response, he says, is down to politicians and policy failing to get people to act responsibly. Loving freedom is, in his eyes, the excuse for “America’s cult of selfishness”. While we can’t 100% pinpoint the reasons behind the high case numbers in Britain and America, it’s interesting to see the UK prime minister and a Nobel laureate making similar arguments. Just how plausible are their cla...
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