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A monument to French rage: buses torched in riots over police killing
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A monument to French rage: buses torched in riots
over police killing
Attack on transport depot at Aubervilliers, north of
Paris, highlights how rioters are targeting public infrastructure
French
riots – latest updates
by
Angelique Chrisafis in Aubervilliers and Pantin
Fri 30 Jun
2023 18.05 BST
Wanissa
watched as smoke rose from the mangled, burnt-out carcasses of 12 buses in the
transport depot at Aubervilliers, north of Paris. “All this is a catastrophe,”
said the 51-year-old cleaner, who now had to walk 3 miles to her next job from
her morning spent mopping the entrance halls of local tower blocks.
The fire
was caused by petrol bombs thrown at the depot during the early hours of Friday
morning, transport authorities said. The facade of the adjacent Aubervilliers
aquatic centre, where training will take place for the 2024 Olympics, was also
damaged.
It was just
one piece of public infrastructure targeted by arson in a night when fireworks
were thrown at police in towns and cities across France, from Roubaix in the
north to Marseille in the south, and public buildings were smashed and burned,
including 28 schools, 34 town halls and 80 police stations or gendarme
buildings in towns from Burgundy to the Loire.
Supermarkets
in small towns and shops in some big cities were looted, including Nike in
central Paris and an Apple store in Strasbourg.
“Everyone
feels anxious and insecure,” Wanissa said. But she understood the groundswell
of anger on display in three nights of nationwide unrest after the death of a
17-year-old boy, Nahel, of Algerian background, shot at close range by a police
officer at a traffic stop in Nanterre, west of Paris, on Tuesday.
The
targeting of local buses, so crucial in transporting workers from the
low-income suburbs on the edge of Paris, was seen by the government as highly
symbolic of a deep-seated rage at the state. “It adds injustice to injustice,”
said the transport minister, Clément Beaune. A tram was set alight in Lyon, and
a bus driver was pulled from her bus in Bordeaux as a group of people attempted
to torch it. The interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, took the extraordinary
measure of demanding all bus and tram transport be shut down after 9pm across
France.
“What we’re
seeing is tension that has been growing for years: the shooting of Nahel is a
reminder there’s too much racism in France,” Wanissa said. “The government has
to act on racism. We’ve been saturated by it since the 2022 presidential election
campaign where [the far-right candidate] Éric Zemmour was all over the media
attacking foreigners and immigrants. Marine Le Pen is gaining support. The
government constantly talks about new immigration laws, which stigmatises
people further.
“When my colleagues
who get up to clean at 4am or 5am look around at other cleaners, we are all
Black and north African. France is divided and this police shooting has brought
it all to the fore. That boy is not the first to be killed by police and we’re
all waking up today thinking it could be my nephews, my son who is shot. The
government has to tackle racism if anything is to move on.”
Two unions
representing half of French police said on Friday that they were at war with
“vermin” and “savage hordes”, sparking criticism from politicians on the left.
“It’s no longer enough to call for calm, it must be imposed,” the Alliance
Police Nationale and UNSA Police unions said in a statement that was disavowed
by the overall head of the UNSA union federation.
The
government has asked for local decrees banning the sale and transport of
fireworks and flammable material. For several nights, powerful “roman candle”
firework mortars, intended to be fired from the ground towards the sky for
pyrotechnic displays, were lit and thrown horizontally at police during
clashes.
“There was
screaming, smoke and fireworks going off in all directions,” said Zakia, 71,
who had been awake all night keeping watch at her tower block. “There were kids
with huge bags of fireworks who fire them at police.”
Malika, 73,
a retired hospital healthcare assistant, said: “From my flat on the ninth floor
it was all fire and smoke. We’ve long been worried about the reputation of the
suburbs north of Paris, which are always stigmatised, but actually now it’s the
whole country – from Marseille to Lille.”
Nearby,
there were smashed windows across the front of a maison du quartier community
centre in Pantin, which housed a library and youth and children’s activities.
Local people said the fact that this respected resource had been attacked was a
sign of how the unrest was different to the urban disturbances of 2005, when
the death of two young boys hiding from police in an electricity substation in
Clichy-sous-Bois outside Paris triggered weeks of clashes and a state of
national emergency was declared.
In 2005,
the unrest began days after the boys’ deaths and built more slowly. This time
it was instant and has spread across France very quickly, filmed and shared on
social media, and with more public services targeted. In 2005 more than 9,000
cars were burned in three weeks; overnight from Thursday to Friday alone about
1,119 cars were burned across France.
One video
on social media showed a group of people targeting a school in Villeurbanne,
outside Lyon, with a woman running after them shouting: “Please! Not the
school!”
Samira, who
works at the maison du quartier and lives in a tower block opposite, saw the
centre smashed during hours of unrest. “I was at my window until 4am. At the
start of the night, there were about 60 young people running around. I was
shouting down at them: ‘Not the cars! Don’t burn people’s cars!’ There was only
one car burnt which was a police car. Two officers had been sitting in it. It
was torched and they ran out.”
The
ash-white remains of the police car lay overturned at the end of the road.
Samira said: “People want to make themselves heard about injustice: the 17-year-old
boy should not have been killed by police. This feels very different to 2005,
there is more anger, more places are being attacked, more public resources are
being targeted. The thing is, this is not the way to express anger by
destroying local services.”
Maurice,
30, who works at a food factory, said: “Young people are calling it a revolt
for justice. It’s true that even the way the police speak to you if you’re
Black is disdainful. But destroying transport and buildings is just going to
harm the people who live in these areas. We’re the ones who will have to pay
for it.”
Jacob, a
teenager, looked at the charred buses and said: “I hope I can still get my bus
to football tonight, it would take me an hour to walk.”
Cricri, 20,
a business student from Bobigny outside Paris, where a post office and a
jobcentre had been burned, had seen bins and cars set alight. “I’m going to get
home early tonight. This is going to go on for nights on end.”
Mort de Nahel : après trois nuits d’émeutes, les appels à l’unité nationale se multiplient à droite et au RN / Death of Nahel: after three nights of riots, calls for national unity multiply on the right and the RN
Mort de Nahel : après trois nuits d’émeutes, les appels à
l’unité nationale se multiplient à droite et au RN
Devant l’ampleur des dégâts et l’inquiétude d’un
enlisement du conflit, les responsables des Républicains comme ceux du
Rassemblement national appellent à faire bloc derrière le gouvernement.
Par Marion
Mourgue
Le 30 juin 2023 à
18h45
Devant
l’inquiétude de nouvelles nuits d’émeutes et la colère devant les dégâts commis
dans toute la France, les appels à l’unité nationale se sont multipliés
vendredi 30 juin à droite et à l’extrême droite, trois jours après la mort de
Nahel, tué mardi par un tir policier à Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine). Le patron de
l’Association des maires de France David Lisnard a été l’un des premiers à ne
pas vouloir rentrer dans la surenchère politique, jugeant prioritaire le retour
au calme avant la joute politique. « Il faut, comme préalable à toute réponse,
le retour à l’ordre et nous devons tous être soudés dans cet objectif, dans un
esprit d’unité de la Nation », indiquait le maire LR de Cannes jeudi au
Parisien.
« Dans la
situation tragique que nous traversons, tout responsable politique ne peut
avoir que deux attitudes », a poursuivi quelques heures plus tard, sur Twitter,
le patron des sénateurs LR Bruno Retailleau, « soutenir sans failles nos forces
de l’ordre et laisser travailler le gouvernement ».
Malgré des
désaccords persistants avec la politique d’Emmanuel Macron, notamment sur les
questions de sécurité, les Républicains ont décidé de faire bloc avec le
gouvernement pour parvenir à calmer la situation sur le terrain. Un choix
politique, alors que LR revendique être un parti de gouvernement ; un choix de
raison, alors que, localement, ses élus constatent, impuissants, l’ampleur des
dégâts et craignent de voir la situation devenir totalement incontrôlable.
« La gravité de
la situation doit inspirer une attitude de dignité »
« Notre pays se
trouve au bord d’un précipice dans lequel pourraient s’abîmer nos institutions
et notre cohésion nationale, c’est-à-dire la République elle-même », a ainsi
insisté le président des Républicains, Éric Ciotti, vendredi en fin de journée,
dans un communiqué. « La gravité de la situation doit inspirer, à tous les élus
attachés aux valeurs de la République, une attitude de dignité. Le sens de
l’unité nationale doit guider notre comportement », a-t-il clairement indiqué,
en appelant à « la responsabilité ». « Le temps viendra pour tous de tirer les
leçons de cette crise et d’en analyser les causes. Mais le temps est
aujourd’hui au combat pour le retour à l’ordre républicain ».
Une manière aussi
de faire bloc contre les élus de la France insoumise, « des forces
antirépublicaines », a accusé Marine Le Pen dans une vidéo postée sur son
compte Twitter. « J’entends m’en tenir à la conduite qui est la nôtre, de ne
rien faire qui puisse empêcher ou entraver l’action des autorités légitimes qui
ont en charge l’ordre public », a fait valoir l’ex candidate à la
présidentielle, avant de demander à Emmanuel Macron « de recevoir les
formations représentées à l’Assemblée nationale pour évoquer la situation grave
du pays et les initiatives que la République doit engager pour la sauvegarde de
la liberté et de la sécurité publique ».
Death of Nahel: after three nights of riots,
calls for national unity multiply on the right and the RN
Faced with the extent of the damage and the concern of
a stalemate in the conflict, the leaders of the Republicans as well as those of
the National Rally call to unite behind the government.
By Marion
Mourgue
June 30,
2023 at 6:45 pm
Faced with
the concern of new nights of riots and anger at the damage committed throughout
the France, calls for national unity multiplied Friday, June 30 on the right
and the far right, three days after the death of Nahel, killed Tuesday by a
police shot in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine). The boss of the Association of Mayors
of France David Lisnard was one of the first not to want to enter into the
political one-upmanship, judging priority the return to calm before the
political joust. "It is necessary, as a prerequisite for any response, the
return to order and we must all be united in this objective, in a spirit of
unity of the Nation," said the mayor LR of Cannes Thursday to the
Parisian.
"In
the tragic situation we are going through, any political leader can only have
two attitudes," continued a few hours later, on Twitter, the boss of the
senators LR Bruno Retailleau, "support without fail our forces of order
and let the government work".
Despite
persistent disagreements with Emmanuel Macron's policy, particularly on
security issues, the Republicans have decided to join forces with the
government to calm the situation on the ground. A political choice, while LR
claims to be a party of government; A choice of reason, while, locally, its
elected representatives watch, powerlessly, the extent of the damage and fear
that the situation will become totally uncontrollable.
"The
gravity of the situation must inspire an attitude of dignity"
"Our
country is on the edge of a precipice in which our institutions and our
national cohesion, that is to say the Republic itself, could be damaged,"
insisted the president of the Republicans, Eric Ciotti, Friday at the end of
the day, in a statement. "The gravity of the situation must inspire all
elected officials attached to the values of the Republic to an attitude of
dignity. The sense of national unity must guide our behavior," he made
clear, calling for "responsibility." "The time will come for
everyone to learn from this crisis and analyse its causes. But now is the time
to fight for the return to republican order."
A way also
to block against the elected representatives of the rebellious France,
"anti-republican forces," accused Marine Le Pen in a video posted on
her Twitter account. "I intend to stick to the conduct that is ours, to do
nothing that can prevent or hinder the action of the legitimate authorities who
are in charge of public order," said the former presidential candidate,
before asking Emmanuel Macron "to receive the formations represented in
the National Assembly to discuss the serious situation of the country and the
initiatives that the Republic must undertake for the safeguarding of freedom
and freedom. public safety."
France protests: nearly 500 arrested as riots surge in Marseille and Lyon
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France protests: nearly 500 arrested as riots
surge in Marseille and Lyon
Fourth night of demonstrations sees 45,000 police
deployed as authorities claim the situation is calmer
Jonathan
Yerushalmy and agencies
Sat 1 Jul
2023 05.30 BST
More than
470 people in France were arrested during a fourth night of unrest triggered by
the fatal police shooting of a teenager, but officials claimed that the
situation was calmer than on the previous night.
Forty-five
thousand police officers, including special forces, were deployed to respond to
rioting and looting across the country on Friday night. Reports indicated that
conditions in Paris were slightly calmer than on previous nights, while the
situation in other major cities like Marseille and Lyon was more chaotic, with
buildings and vehicles torched and stores looted.
Shops in
several malls in Paris suburbs, as well as an Apple store in the centre of
Strasbourg, were looted on Friday afternoon.
“It’s the
republic that will win, not the rioters,” France’s interior minister, Gérald
Darmanin, said as he met with police in the early hours of Saturday morning.
“We are at 471 arrests on national territory,” he said, but noted “a much lower
intensity than during the day yesterday and even the day before yesterday”.
More than 900 people were arrested on the previous
night.
Darmanin
denounced the “unacceptable violence in Lyon and Marseille” where public
demonstrations were banned and public transport halted.
More than
80 arrests were made in Marseille, according to the interior ministry, and
“significant reinforcements” were sent after the mayor, Benoit Payan, called on
the national government to immediately send additional troops.
“The scenes
of pillaging and violence are unacceptable,” Payan tweeted late on Friday,
after police clashed with protesters.
Local media
reported that an Aldi was the target of a looting ram-raid, while authorities
said they were investigating the cause of an apparent explosion in the city,
which they did not believe caused any casualties.
Several
rifles were looted from a gun store, but no ammunition was taken. One person
was arrested with a rifle that was probably from the store, police said.
In Lyon and
its surrounding suburbs, rioters set cars ablaze and aimed fireworks at police.
Police deployed armoured personnel carriers and a helicopter to quell the
unrest in France’s third-largest city.
Local media
reported a quieter night in Paris, where “a massive deployment of law
enforcement forces deterred the slightest hint of confrontation or disruption”,
the Le Monde newspaper said.
Despite
this, there were still 120 arrests in the capital, with reports of burnt
garbage and violent scuffles in the Les Halles district.
The unrest
flared nationwide after Nahel M, a 17-year-old of Algerian and Moroccan
descent, was shot by police on Tuesday during a traffic stop in a Paris suburb.
His death, caught on video, has reignited longstanding complaints of police
violence and racism.
The
38-year-old officer involved in the shooting, who has said he fired the shot
because he feared he and his colleague or someone else could be hit by the car,
has been charged with voluntary homicide and placed in provisional detention.
Nahel is
due to be buried in a ceremony on Saturday, according to the mayor of Nanterre,
the Paris suburb where he lived and was killed. The family’s lawyers have asked
journalists to stay away, saying it was “a day of reflection” for Nahel’s
relatives.
Mayor
Patrick Jarry said: “There’s a feeling of injustice in many residents’ minds, whether
it’s about school achievement, getting a job, access to culture, housing and
other life issues … I believe we are in that moment when we need to face the
urgency [of the situation].”
Speaking in
Mantes-la-Jolie, Darmanin highlighted the young age of many of those taking
part in demonstrations.
“I do not
confuse the few hundred, the few thousand delinquents, often very young
unfortunately, with the vast majority of our compatriots who live in
working-class neighbourhoods, who want to work and educate their children,” he
said.
The French
football team urged an end to the violence on Friday night.
“The time
of violence must give way to that of mourning, dialogue and reconstruction,”
the team said in a statement posted on social media by their captain, Kylian
Mbappé.
The team
said they were “shocked by the brutal death of young Nahel” but asked that
violence give way to “other peaceful and constructive ways of expressing
oneself”.
The French
president, Emmanuel Macron, left a European Union summit in Brussels early on
Friday to attend a crisis meeting. He urged parents to keep their children at
home and accused social media companies of playing a “considerable role”,
saying violence was being organised online. He asked platforms such as Snapchat
and TikTok to remove sensitive content.
Macron is
under mounting pressure from rightwing parties to declare a state of emergency,
which would give authorities extra powers to ban demonstrations and limit free
movement.
Asked on
Friday night whether the government could declare a state of emergency,
Darmanin said: “We’re not ruling out any hypothesis and we’ll see after tonight
what the president of the republic chooses.”
Darmanin
said on Saturday he was cautious about such an order, which “has been called
four times in 60 years”.
Analysts
said the government was desperate to avoid a repeat of 2005, when a state of
emergency was declared after the death of two boys of African origin in a
police chase sparked three weeks of rioting.
Reuters contributed to this report
Europe swings right — and reshapes the EU
Europe swings right — and reshapes the EU
Italy, Finland, Greece have recently moved right.
Spain could be next. The shift will affect everything from climate policy to
migration.
BY SUZANNE
LYNCH
JUNE 30,
2023 4:01 AM CET
https://www.politico.eu/article/far-right-giorgia-meloni-europe-swings-right-and-reshapes-the-eu/
First, it
was Italy.
Then came
Finland and Greece. Spain could be next.
Across
Europe, governments are shifting right. In some places, far-right leaders are
taking power. In others, more traditional center-right parties are allying with
the right-wing fringes once considered untouchable.
Elsewhere,
hard-right parties are securing more parliament seats and regional offices. The
Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, already under surveillance for suspected
far-right extremism, now outpolls Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats and
just scored a watershed district election win — an alarming moment for a
country conscious of its Nazi past.
The trend,
of course, didn’t exactly begin with Italy and far-right Prime Minister Giorgia
Meloni. But the last year has featured a series of eye-catching results for
conservatives. And more could be on the way, as places like Spain and Slovakia
seem poised to turn right in upcoming elections.
It’s a
development that will inevitably reshape Europe, affecting everything from how
climate change is handled, to parental rights, to who is welcomed into the
Continent.
And with
the EU set to elect a new European Parliament next year, the rightward drift
could also produce a more conservative Brussels for years to come — a period
that will feature critical decisions on things like expanding the EU eastward,
trading with China and policing the rule of law in EU countries.
“There has
been a convergence of the center right and the far right over the past decade
or so,” said Hans Kundnani, a European political analyst at the Chatham House,
who traced the broader arc back to the surge of refugees fleeing the Syrian
civil war for Europe.
The shift,
he added, “may have profound consequences for the EU.”
At the same table
Europe’s
shifting political landscape was on display in Brussels this week as EU leaders
gathered for their regular summit.
At the
table was a fresh face — Petteri Orpo, Finland’s new prime minister, who leads
the conservative National Coalition Party.
His
country’s political journey over the last year illustrates the rightward turn
that has taken hold in parts of Europe. After four years of a left-leaning,
five-party coalition government, voters abandoned Social Democrat Sanna Marin,
leading to the establishment of the most right-wing government in Finnish
history.
Greek Prime
Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis also arrived riding high on an election win. The
55-year-old center-right leader romped home in national elections on Sunday,
notching a far bigger majority than his first time around.
The
question of who occupies seats at the EU table matters — the European Council,
which gathers the bloc’s 27 leaders, must ultimately decide the EU’s political
priorities and policy initiatives.
“I think we
are already seeing the Meloni effect,” said one senior EU diplomat who spoke
privately to talk freely about the European Council’s inner workings. “On
migration, on climate, there has been a move towards the right, undoubtedly.”
The first
signs that Meloni was being embraced, not isolated, emerged last fall at her
first EU summit.
As leaders
tackled the thorny issue of migration, the Italian leader found she was pushing
an open door, finding tacit support in the room for her desire to have EU
policy focus more on deterring migrants from even coming to Europe, according
to three diplomats briefed on the discussion that day.
A few
months later, centrist Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and center-right
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, the EU’s top executive, were
accompanying Meloni on a trip to Tunisia to try to curb migratory flows from
the North African country — a show of cross-party unity.
The trip
came only hours after EU countries clinched an Italy-friendly agreement on how
to process and relocate migrants, which would give Meloni’s government greater
leeway to send back rejected asylum seekers.
And in Parliament
The
rightward drift could soon jump to the European Parliament, with ramifications
for how Brussels is run.
In less
than a year, voters will go to the polls to elect a new Parliament, and
conservatives are predicting robust gains. To start, that would embolden the
center-right European People’s Party (EPP) — already the Parliament’s largest
political family.
“The
biggest gains may be for the more traditional, center-right parties,” said
Karel Lannoo, head of the Centre for European Policy Studies, noting the
dominant role played by center-right stalwarts like Germany’s Christian
Democrats, which represent the largest national representation in the EU
Parliament and are likely to retain that position.
But a
strong conservative showing may also turn the farther-right European
Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group — featuring Meloni and Poland’s
nationalist Law and Justice party — into kingmakers, with centrist and
center-right lawmakers courting its votes to push their agenda.
That would
mirror a growing feature of national politics — the willingness of traditional
conservative parties to cozy up to the far right. From Sweden, where a
conservative leader gets support from the far-right Sweden Democrats, to
Finland, where the right-wing populist Finns Party is in power, more extreme
parties are getting a chance to help govern, even if in diluted form.
There are
signs a similar political calculation is under way in the European Parliament,
with the EPP already eyeing beneficial team-ups with the far-right. European
Parliament President Roberta Metsola was the latest EPP leader to pay homage to
Meloni, visiting her at Palazzo Chigi in Rome last week, following similar
outreach by Manfred Weber, who helms the EPP.
And the
groups recently came together to fight a nature restoration law — a key plank
of the EU’s plan to become climate neutral by 2050. For now, the EPP — with ECR
backing — has successfully torpedoed the bill, citing the concerns of farmers
and chastising the European Commission for going too far, too fast on the green
agenda.
The
rebellion is a telling sign of the political havoc Parliament could wreak on a
more left-leaning Commission after the 2024 elections.
More to come
With one
year left until EU citizens hit the polls, the next few months will be
punctuated by key moments that will offer insight into which way the political
wind is blowing.
First up is
Spain, with voters going to the polls next month.
The
country’s main center-right party, the People’s Party (PP), is confident it
will win back power after trouncing Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s socialist
party in local elections last month.
As the
campaign heats up, Sanchez is warning of a possible tie-up between the PP and
the far-right Vox party, hoping the PP’s association with Vox may put off
left-leaning, middle-class voters. But a return to power by the PP — as seems
likely — would solidify Europe’s right-wing tilt.
Elsewhere,
Poland’s Law and Justice — a hub of right-wing power in the EU — is leading in
the polls ahead of a fall election, while Slovakia is braced for the comeback
of populist leader Robert Fico in snap elections scheduled for September.
Not all
countries are following the trend — centrist governments in Ireland and
Lithuania, for example, are facing electoral challenges from the left. And
Germany, the EU’s most populous country, is still led by a social democrat. But
even there, Olaf Scholz’s grip on power is wobbly, and the rival Christian
Democrats and far-right AfD are surging in the polls.
That said,
any leftward breeze can’t compare — for the moment — to the jet stream headed
the other way.
The Partygate probe should have stopped at Johnson, and let his tinpot army fade into obscurity
CARTOON : Ben Jennings
Thu 29 Jun 2023 21.44 BSTLast modified on Fri 30 Jun
2023 00.00 BST
The Partygate probe should have stopped at
Johnson, and let his tinpot army fade into obscurity
Simon
Jenkins
MPs feel they have to assert their authority after his
insults, but going after his friends risks looking petty and partisan
.webp)
Thu 29 Jun
2023 15.47 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/29/partygate-boris-johnson-mps-friends
The House
of Commons privileges committee is besotted with Boris Johnson. No sooner did
we breathe sighs of relief as he disappeared over the horizon three weeks ago,
than the committee has hauled him back for another thrashing in the headlines.
This time
it is aiming at his “friends and allies”, who called it a kangaroo court and a
witch-hunt. These friends stand accused for their vociferous and unprecedented
remarks, offending, harassing, belittling and showering the committee with
contempt. It has duly “named” them, though to what end is unclear.
Everyone knew
their names. We were fed up with Nadine Dorries, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Priti Patel
and assorted peers, all honoured by Johnson, desperately defending him as the
committee’s hearings into Partygate dragged on. They argued, in private and in
public, that Partygate was not the most earth-shattering of offences for which
Johnson might reasonably have been condemned. No one died. He grovelled,
apologised profusely, and returned to business. He said he did not
“intentionally” deceive MPs because, like Don Giovanni, he genuinely thought he
was telling the truth at the time.
Critics of
the committee, who extend beyond Johnson’s friends, also point out that prime
ministers distort, befuddle and deceive at the dispatch box week after week.
Attacking them is the job of the opposition, which it also does week after
week. Must all statements at the dispatch box now be subject to a Commons
inquiry? If this committee’s job is to protect the good name and reputation of
the house, why has it been so silent on corruption, conflicts of interest,
dodgy aides and fiddled expenses?
In sum, the
case against the committee’s latest intervention is that is being absurdly
oversensitive. It is surely a right of MPs to express a view on a matter that
had long reduced the hothouse of national politics to a frenzy. Surely we can
get over it and move on.
In
response, the committee argues that under Johnson, parliament was persistently
bypassed and deceived. Its job is to guard against that. Its work is unique.
Members of parliament enjoy the constitutional right to speak freely in the
chamber, untrammelled by fear of legal action or other retribution. That in
turn demands they firmly police themselves. The committee is that policeman.
That is why
respect for the committee’s authority is vital. The membership carries a
governing party majority, while the chairwoman is drawn from the opposition.
Parliament may neglect any obligation to reform itself. The weight of history,
so long regarded as its glory, risks plunging it into political irrelevance.
But it must guard its rights and dignities and be respected. Johnson’s friends
did not respect it; they insulted it.
The
committee can also point out that in this case it was merely advising the
Commons. It was for MPs collectively to pass judgment on Johnson, a decision he
funked by resigning his seat. In the event, only seven friends voted against
the committee. A reasonable conclusion is that the committee was right to take
Johnson’s mendacity to the Commons seriously, but its response does appear
disproportionate. The drawn-out investigation of Johnson’s role in Partygate,
three years after the event, was dilatory and thus appeared partisan. So did
the severity of the punishment, in effect seeking to strip Johnson of his seat
and his job, by triggering a recall election.
By now it
has more than achieved its goal. It has driven Johnson out of parliament with
the overwhelming support of MPs. It can surely ignore Johnson’s tinpot barmy
army. Let them dribble away, and let this wretched episode finally end.
Simon
Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
how privatisation drained Thames Water’s coffers Decades of underinvestment and bumper dividends have left the firm debt-laden and under investigation
Explainer
In charts: how privatisation drained Thames
Water’s coffers
Decades of underinvestment and bumper dividends
have left the firm debt-laden and under investigation
Sandra
Laville, Anna Leach and Carmen Aguilar García
Fri 30 Jun
2023 06.00 BST
In a little
over three decades, Thames Water, the biggest water and sewerage company in
England, serving 15 million people, has transformed from a debt-free public
utility into what critics argue is a privately owned investment vehicle
carrying the highest debt in the industry.
Over those
years – as admitted by Sarah Bentley, the firm’s departing CEO – its executives
and the shareholders and private equity companies who own it have presided over
decades of underinvestment, aggressive cost-cutting and huge dividend payments.
The symptom
of these decades can be seen in the scale of sewage discharges, the record
leaks from its pipes and the state of its treatment plants – which are now at
the centre of a criminal investigation by the Environment Agency into illegal
sewage dumping and a regulatory inquiry by Ofwat.
Analysis of
the accounts of Thames Water between 1990 and 2022 reveal a story that is
echoed to some degree across the industry. The figures show how privatisation –
which was intended to lead to a new era of investment, improved water quality
and low bills – turned water into a cash cow for investment firms and private
equity companies, none more so than the Australian infrastructure asset
management firm Macquarie which, with its co-investors, bought Thames Water in
2006 from the German utility firm RWE for £4.8bn.
By the time
Macquarie sold its stake in Thames Water in 2017, debts had more than tripled
from £3.2bn to £10.5bn, unadjusted for inflation. Its pattern was to borrow
against its assets to increase dividend payments to shareholders.
By 2017,
when Macquarie sold its last stake, the pattern of debt remained, and the rate
of accruing debt continued on the same trajectory.
Macquarie
and its co-investors made their position clear from the start, hiking dividends
in the first year of their operations, 2007, to £656m when profits were a
fraction of that at £241m.
Over their
11 years of control, Macquarie and its co-investors paid out £2.8bn to
shareholders, which is two-fifths of the total £7bn in dividends that Thames
Water has paid between 1990 and 2022. The average yearly dividends paid during
the Macquarie period were five times higher than those paid after it sold its
final stake in 2017. The consortium that took over ownership of Thames Water in
2017 has not taken a dividend since, but the company has paid internal
dividends – including £37m in the year to 31 March 2022.
Ofwat
recommends that companies maintain a ratio of debt to capital value of 60%. But
Thames Water’s debt now amounts to £14.3bn – almost a quarter of the total
£60bn debt run up by the privatised water companies in just over three decades.
This weight
of debt is at one of the highest levels in the industry, with Thames Water’s
gearing at 80%. More than half of this debt is inflation-linked, leaving Thames
facing hikes on its debt repayment, even as it is being told to invest billions
more fixing the infrastructure which has been left to crumble.
Thames Water could delay accounts as turmoil in water industry grows
.webp)
Thames Water could delay accounts as turmoil in
water industry grows
Firm refuses to say when it will publish annual
report; pressure builds on regulator Ofwat
Anna Isaac
and Sandra Laville
Thu 29 Jun
2023 19.26 BST
Thames
Water has refused to say when it will publish its annual report and accounts,
which had been expected by investors next week, as concerns mount over the
company’s financial viability.
The risk of
delay will add to the turmoil engulfing England’s 11 privatised water
companies, after a day in which board directors, ministers and regulators
scrambled to restore calm as discussions continued over a potential temporary
nationalisation of Thames Water.
The
Guardian revealed on Wednesday that England’s largest water company, which
serves 15 million customers in an area than spans the Thames Valley from London
to Oxford and beyond, may have to spend £10bn improving its pipes and treatment
works to meet the legal minimums required by regulators.
However,
the company is refusing to say publicly whether the accounts will appear next
week, or even before the regulator’s deadline. Sources familiar with the
emergency talks are raising questions about whether the financial issues could
cause its auditor, PwC, to delay signing off the accounts. PwC has declined to
comment.
Ofwat tried
to restore calm on Thursday. Releasing a “statement on financial resilience in
the water sector”, it said Thames Water had “significant issues to address” but
that the company had “strong liquidity”, having recently received an additional
£500m from shareholders, and it now had £4.4bn in cash and committed funding.
Downing
Street said the prime minister had “full confidence” in Ofwat and its ability
to monitor the situation, and that the regulator was “focused on doing their
job to keep companies’ financial resilience under close scrutiny”. The health
minister Neil O’Brien sought to reassure Thames customers, telling the BBC:
“Absolutely nothing is going to happen in terms of either their bills or their
access to water.”
Meanwhile,
the EA revealed it was stepping up an investigation into illegal sewage
dumping, with the agency’s teams uncovering what they say is potentially
widespread non-compliance with rules on sewage treatment across 10 water
companies.
The EA
investigation, launched in November 2021, is running parallel to an
investigation by Ofwat into the financial impacts on companies of failure to
comply with the rules around sewage discharges.
Breaching
the permit rules means sewage discharges are illegal and water firms can be
prosecuted. A failure to meet permit requirements could also lead to water
companies being stripped of their licences to operate. The criminal inquiry is
the largest since investigators spent five years examining illegal sewage
dumping by Southern Water. Their investigation led to the water company being
fined a record £90m by a crown court judge.
Investigators
will be visiting some of the 2,200 sewage treatment plants run by Thames Water
and other companies to secure evidence as they prepare their case. The
investigation was sparked by research by Prof Peter Hammond that suggested the
scale of illegal sewage dumping by water companies was 10 times what the EA had
believed it to be.
The agency
said: “Our initial assessment indicates that there may have been widespread and
serious non-compliance of environmental permit conditions by all companies. We
take the implications of this extremely seriously and are committed to understanding
the scale and impact of any alleged offending.”
The crisis
in the water industry has reignited a debate about whether the regional
monopolies created by privatisation in 1989 should be taken back into public
ownership. Over three decades, Thames Water has been saddled with debt by a
succession of owners, with the company now owing £14bn to its creditors and
struggling to raise the cash needed to maintain its infrastructure.
The company
is in talks with the Treasury, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs and Ofwat about a solution that could involve it being placed under a
special administration regime, under which its current owners would hand over
management to officials.
Thames
Water has turned to Montague, a City veteran whom several British governments
have tapped up to manage financial challenges at infrastructure companies. He
will take over from Ian Marchant, who told the board in April that he would
stand down next month.
As deputy
chair of Network Rail, Montague helped to create the non-profit,
government-controlled company to take on the running of Britain’s railway
tracks after the 2001 collapse of Railtrack. He helped to lay foundations for a
sale of British Energy, which operated UK nuclear power plants, after it faced
severe financial difficulties.
The heavily
indebted Yorkshire Water said it had raised £500m on Monday to shore up its
balance sheet. Its shareholders include Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC
and the German private equity group Corsair Capital.
The vast
bulk of the cash will be funnelled immediately into the repayment of an
intercompany loan. These sorts of loans have become common in a sector that has
grown increasingly burdened by debt in recent years and Ofwat has sought to
rein in their use.
Yorkshire
Water and Thames Water are two of five firms that Ofwat said it believed to be
in precarious financial positions, along with Portsmouth Water, Southern Water
and SES Water.
A
spokesperson for Thames Water declined to comment on the size of the cash
injection it needed but said it retained “a strong liquidity position” and that
it was working “constructively” with shareholders.
August 17, 2022: IMPOSSIBLE ROYAL AIR FORCE PERSONNEL POLICIES EXPOSED BY HOWARD WHEELDON, FRAES, WHEELDON STRATEGIC ADVISORY LTD.
IMPOSSIBLE ROYAL AIR FORCE PERSONNEL POLICIES
EXPOSED BY HOWARD WHEELDON, FRAES, WHEELDON STRATEGIC ADVISORY LTD.
August 17,
2022 by
A mass of
tweets in response to the Sky News report yesterday written by Deborah Haynes
in which it was stated that the head of RAF recruitment had resigned –
allegedly in protest at an ‘effective pause, on offering jobs to white male
recruits in favour of a need to take on more women and those from ethnic
minorities in order to meet “impossible diversity targets” is hardly
surprising.
This is a
report that says what a great many serving people within the Royal Air Force
privately believe and that have been bottling it up because they know that
without permissions, talking to the media is a disciplinary offence.
Denied as
it later would be by RAF officials, I can confirm that Group Captain Lizzie
Nicholl, a highly respected, determined and extremely knowledgeable Royal Air
Force has resigned – this reasoned by what was alluded to in the Sky News piece
and most probably, a lot more besides. This was a commendable decision and one
made by a very passioned senior officer who had the interests of her people
first and foremost at heart.
To that
end, I dread to think of what Lizzie Nicholl has suffered as she struggled to
do her job in the face of adversity in the form of stealthily deployed RAF
policies from high and that they thought they could get away with.
I do not
know Lizzie Nicholl but she deserves nothing but praise for what she has
achieved and now done in her standing up against policies instigated by the
Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston. These are policies
that even if I were to attempt to be kind I would have to describe as clearly
wrong and being little short of an illegal campaign of institutional sexism and
racism against white male officers.
Believe me
when I say that I am very much saddened that I have to say something like this
and never thought that the day would come when I needed to. It is also one that
I know I speak for many members and former members of the Royal Air Force and
who I well know share my fears.
After three
decades of supporting the Royal Air Force in almost every respect, choosing my
words very carefully and often unofficially fighting battles that needed to be
fought and raised that, due to the politics of UK defence, others may well have
been prevented from doing themselves and of my working closely with more former
Chiefs of the Air Staff and their staff than I probably care to remember, it
gives me no pleasure whatsoever to say what I and I know many others too have
been bottling up for the best part of two years – that when it comes to morale,
the Royal Air Force today is in a very bad
place and that this is reasoned by the policies of one man and one man
alone – Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston.
This is a
story that was, at some point, bound to break and I am very relieved that it
now has. That is not to say that the detail in the Sky News article is all
necessarily correct but neither should that be taken as my denying that the
vast majority of it, is true.
To confront
the senior personnel officer with a string of what I can only describe as being
illegal orders just beggar’s belief. And you may well ask why senior officers
who have, no doubt, often been seen to struggle with the raft of ‘wokery’
policies now woven throughout the Royal Air Force failed to challenge and stand
up and be counted?
Perhaps
some did and that is why so many have either chosen to leave or found that
their career paths had come to an end meaning that they had no choice but to
leave.
What a pity
that so many others who might have benefitted from listening to their people
and how they felt failed to confront a diversity policies that I believe called
from 20% of recruits to come from ethnic minorities at a time when this section
of our community represents around 8% to 9% of the UK population. What madness
this has been, what an impossible task however true it is that we need to
encourage more women and ethnic minorities to join and to be a part of the
modern-day Royal Air Force, to benefit from and to serve their country.
But you
don’t achieve that by setting ridiculous, nay impossible targets and that
ignore – nay ride over the prospects for those already in the Service. You
achieve it in a phased and often unspoken way gradually and you ensure first
and foremost, that none of your existing personnel are hurt in the process.
And did I
confront the Chief of the Air Staff myself on the so-called ‘wokery’ issue?
Yes, I certainly did. Knowing well of the discontent felt by an increasing
number of serving officers some who I might add were being prevented from
moving up the promotion ladder, during a dinner in the House of Lords last year
I privately asked the Chief of the Air Staff this:
‘Was there
any room left in the modern-day Royal Air Force for merit’?
I will not
here and now repeat the answer that I received – that would be wrong. But I
will say that it was answered with a large degree of anger.
The
‘wokery’ issue is one that has been festering like a volcano awaiting to erupt
for the best part of two years. Now it has and we must await to see what
happens next. There are those that believe the policy should be immediately
scrapped and along with it, the current CAS.
However, I
fear that unless he chose to resign –
and I am hard pressed to remember if a precedent for exists for that –
with the current Secretary of State’s hands somewhat tied with there being a
moribund Prime Minister still in No 10, one who I believe is currently on
holiday, I would suggest that even when he returns this weekend, it would be
very unlikely that he would sanction change.
As I said
earlier, whether all aspects of the Sky News article are absolutely correct I
do not know. What I do know though is that I am glad that what is and has been
a deep and heartfelt issue within so many members of the Royal Air Force cadre
has now been exposed for what it is – a failed unworkable and very wrong policy
and one that should never have been.
Not for now
perhaps, but it also brings into question again of how Chiefs are chosen and
indeed, what powers they have and should have. If nothing else, I for one hope
that the Royal Air Force can stop looking back and move into the future with
Ops, Capabilities and People – those that we have and those that air force
chiefs should either be fighting to get and in respect of people, fighting for.
CHW (London – 17th August 2022)
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