Hidden expenses make UK monarchy world’s most expensive govt institution

“This is a big step backwards for anyone who wants their food to be produced responsibly, fairly, and sustainably.” GM Freeze Director Liz O’Neill

The European Union has approved three biotech soy traits for import and processing. The latest three are:
• Monsanto’s Roundup Ready 2 Xtend with dicamba and glyphosate tolerance
• Monsanto’s Vistive Gold, which is a high oleic soybean with glyphosate tolerance
• Bayer’s Balance GT which offers tolerance to glyphosate and the company’s HPPD inhibitor (developed with MS Technologies)
Commenting on the news that the European Commission has authorised three new GM soybeans for import, after the European Council (member countries) could not reach a decision, GM Freeze Director Liz O’Neill said

“We hear constantly about the hypothetical potential of new GM techniques but this is the real face of GM 2.0 – more monocultures, sprayed with more herbicides.”

The recent US National Academies of Science report on GM highlighted the “major agricultural problems” caused by GM herbicide tolerant crops and EU approval for three more will only make those problems worse.
EU consumers have been voting with their wallets for years. Sales of GM foods are minimal across Europe because they have to be declared on the label. However, that’s not the case with meat, eggs and dairy products from animals fed on GM. Today’s move will bring yet more GM into the UK and the rest of Europe and consumers will find it very difficult to avoid buying GM-fed.
GM Freeze is the UK’s umbrella campaign for a moratorium on GM in food and farming. Members include the Soil Association, Friends of the Earth, farmers, scientists, retailers, and local campaigners.
Europe is a major soybean customer with more than 165 million bushels of exports already in 2016.

Frackings impact on farms left out of UK Govts assessment.

A Defra report into the impact of shale gas on the rural economy was released on Wednesday (1 July 2016).
But the 22-page report, much of which had been withheld, devotes just two sentences to farming.
It warns that the industrialisation of the landscape from shale gas exploration could adversely impact farming and rural tourism businesses and that possible surface water pollution could impact people who ate “contaminated wildlife, livestock, or agricultural products”. But Defra has discontinued the study, and a spokesman at the Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc) said it had not done any specific impact assessment on farming and food production because it was satisfied the risks of fracking could be managed.
Decc said it based this on the findings of two reports – but Farmers Weekly found that neither of these looked in any detail at the impact on farming businesses and food production.

This is despite numerous concerns raised by farmers, the public and MPs about possible water contamination, degradation of farmland, food safety and the potential loss of contracts with processors and retailers.

Tony Holden, a dairy farmer’s son in Lancashire, said he feared supermarkets would ban produce from fracked farmland.

“I’m really worried because if we have an accident on farm and [the well] spurts stuff out, that land is redundant, useless. Farmers aren’t being told the truth,” he said.
Get yourself informed.If anyone comes in a shiny suit and offers up lots of money, they’re probably not the person you want to be dealing with.”

Charities say soaring housing rental costs, unhealthy conditions in homes, and rising levels of homelessness mean UK is in violation of UN commitment on homes

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/28/uk-housing-crisis-in-breach-of-human-rights

Robert Booth Tuesday 28 April 2015 00.54 BST

The UK is in breach of its own United Nations human rights commitment to provide people with adequate homes because the housing crisis is so serious, a consortium of leading housing charities has warned. They cite soaring housing rental costs, unhealthy conditions in homes, and rising levels of homelessness and warn of “profound issues of lack of supply, increasing housing costs, lack of security of tenure and homes of such poor quality that they are unfit for habitation”.

Called Just Fair, the group’s members include Crisis, Oxfam, Amnesty International, Save the Children and Unicef UK. Their document describes the right to housing in England as in “crisis”.

“It is quite clear we are in breach of our UN obligations,” said the report’s author, Dr Jessie Hohmann, law lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. “It is possible to take policy steps to protect the most vulnerable and marginalised, but the UK government has decided not to do that. Since the 1980s we have lost any concept of housing’s social function, and that is why protest movements are gaining ground. Without decent housing, you can’t experience an adequate life in society, but now housing is seen just as an asset.”

In a 40-page report, Just Fair concluded:

Private rents are at double the level of council properties, at £163 a week, and a quarter of those renting rely on housing benefit to meet the cost
A third of homes in the private rented sector do not meet basic standards of health, safety and habitability
Rough sleeping in London increased by more than a third between autumn 2013 and autumn 2014, while funding for shelters fell
Last December there were almost 62,000 households in England living in temporary accommodation, the highest number for five years, and 280,000 households are at risk of homelessness
The number of families living in bed and breakfasts more than tripled from 630 in 2010 to 2,040 last year
“Exceptionally high” levels of rising homelessness and the growing number of households at risk of homelessness represent “a serious failing in the government’s obligations”, it concludes.
According to Just Fair, the UN agreement to “recognise the the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living … including housing” only allows reduction in rights to housing in cases of “force majeure”, including natural disaster and war, and cuts executed during financial crises must be ended when the crisis is over.

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The report cames as party leaders trade blows over housing in the general election campaign. Jon Sparkes, chief executive of the homeless charity Crisis, said the report “should be a wake-up call for all political leaders”. On Sunday, Labour announced plans for rent controls in the private sector, while the previous week the Conservatives said they would extend the right-to-buy to housing association tenants.Grassroots residents’ rebellions against evictions and social housing sell-offs have also focused public anger on the state of the housing market.

Just Fair is overtly critical of coalition policy on housing. Its report said: “Problems in realising the right to housing are linked to a political climate of austerity, and attendant cuts to state social security and other benefits. The resulting situation is accurately identified as one of crisis.” It also says one of the most serious issues is the failure to build enough new homes, which dates back through successive Labour, as well as Conservative, governments.

Among the causes of the worsening crisis, the report also cites the government’s removal of the “spare room subsidy”, also known as the bedroom tax, the “stark undersupply” of new homes, and insecurity of tenure in the private rented market as a result of a the lack of protections in tenancy agreements. “It should be a matter of significant concern that one-third of households in the private rental sector are living in housing that is substandard to the point that is unsafe or unhealthy,” the report states.

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The report suggested that so called “Revenge evictions”, where tenants lose their homes when they complain about standards, are so widespread that as many as 200,000 happening in 2013. That, Just Fair argued, amounted to a breach of the UN covenant’s prohibition against arbitrary eviction.

Responding to the report, Conservative housing minister, Brandon Lewis, said: “We inherited a broken housing market after Labour’s housing crash.” He added that “there is more to do”, but said his party would deliver 275,000 new affordable homes in the next parliament.

“Despite the need to pay off Labour’s deficit, Conservatives in government have worked to increase housebuilding to its highest since 2007 and delivered 217,000 new affordable homes,” he said. “We will ensure economic growth and stability to allow continued investment in frontline services for homeless and the vulnerable.”

For Labour, Emma Reynolds said: “Under David Cameron, housebuilding is at its lowest levels in peacetime since the 1920s, there is a severe lack of affordable homes, families face growing insecurity in the private rented sector, and there has been a dramatic rise in homelessness and rough sleeping. Labour will take action to tackle this crisis.

“We will get 200,000 homes built a year by 2020, boost the number of affordable homes built year on year, reform the private rented sector, and we will set out a long-term strategy to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping.”

“Rough sleeping has risen by 55% in the past five years,” said Sparkes. “This dreadful state of affairs is the result of successive governments’ failure to tackle the housing crisis, combined with severe cuts to housing benefit that have left growing numbers of people struggling to keep a roof over their heads. The housing crisis will not solve itself. We desperately need more affordable homes as well as political action to fix our broken private rented sector.”

The report is intended to inform a UN audit of housing in England starting this autumn. It was largely funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust