From the archive: Is society coming apart?
We are raiding the Guardian Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.
This week, from 2021: Despite Thatcher and Reagan's best efforts, there is and has always been such a thing as society. The question is not whether it exists, but what shape it must take in a post-pandemic world
By Jill Lepore. Read by Kelly Burke
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The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
UK may have failed to protect wild birds with environmental laws, watchdog finds
The government may have failed to protect critical wild bird populations by neglecting to implement environmental law properly, the environmental watchdog has found. Wild bird populations are declining across the UK. Under the EU certain parts of Britain's landscape were designated specially protected conservation zones when the UK was still a member state. They include estuaries, coastal areas and peatlands, as well as wetland areas where wading birds live, and places birds of prey prefer to nest. However, according to the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), the government has failed to ensure adequate protections for these areas and as a result, wild bird populations are declining. Concerningly, ministers are currently passing the planning and infrastructure bill, which would deregulate these specially protected areas and would put more than 5,000 of England's most sensitive, rare and protected natural habitats at high risk of development, according to a Guardian analysis. The OEP was set up after Brexit to hold the government to account under the Environment Act 2021, which was passed to replace EU law. It has sent information notices to the government laying out the issues and giving it two months to respond. Helen Venn, chief regulatory officer for the OEP, said: 'Government has a legal obligation to maintain populations of wild birds and ensure they have enough suitable habitat. One way in which they do this is through special protection areas, which are legally designated sites that protect rare and threatened wild birds.' She added that the government appeared not to be meeting its legally binding plans and targets to halt and reverse the decline of species abundance. Recent government data shows that overall, bird species have declined in number UK-wide by 2% and in England by 7% in the five years since 2018. Faring the worst are farmland birds, which have declined in number severely – by about 61% over the long term (since 1970) and 9% in the short term (the five years between 2018 and 2023) – and woodland birds, whose numbers have fallen by about 35% over the long term and 10% in the short term. 'However, wild bird populations continue to decline across England … Our investigation has found what we believe to be possible failures to comply with environmental law relating to the protection of wild birds and we have therefore decided to move to the next step in our enforcement process, which is to issue information notices setting out our findings.' Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion A Defra spokesperson said: 'Britain is a proud nation of nature lovers, and we are taking bold action to reverse decades of decline. This includes £13m to improve our protected sites and better strategic approaches to restore native species and habitats. 'We will continue to work constructively with the OEP as they take forward this investigation.'
ITV News
5 hours ago
- ITV News
Moment of truth for Labour on 'cliff edge' housing crisis
For the past 45 years Britain has been on a mission - to sell off as much affordable housing as it possibly can without replacing it. And in that mission, we have been extraordinarily successful. According to the government's own data, the number of social homes - the most affordable housing for rent - has dropped by 25% since 1980, while the population has grown by 14%. We have sold off 1.9 million social homes largely under the Right to Buy scheme, which allows tenants to buy the property they rent at a generous discount. It has transformed the way Britain is housed. When Margaret Thatcher came to power, a third of the country lived in a council house, while the number of people who privately rented was just 10%. Today, that trend has almost exactly reversed - millions more people rent from private landlords at a time when rents are at historically high levels. Thatcher started this trend, and every government since has stuck to the plan - a plan which has proven foolish and short-sighted, and the consequences profound. Today, the number of homeless children in England is at the highest level on record. The number of families stuck in temporary accommodation is also the highest since records began. There are 1.3 million households on a waiting list for a social home. Most will have to wait years to get one, many won't ever get one.I will never forget sitting on the grass in a park in north London with a homeless family who were living in a temporary budget hotel after they were unable to find anywhere affordable to rent. I asked eight-year-old Callis what his dream was - footballer, astronaut, doctor? His response: 'Somewhere to live, and to stay there.' This all comes at an enormous cost. The government spends more than £20 billion a year on housing benefit, subsidising the rent of people who cannot afford to pay it. That has doubled since 1997. The state is spending more on helping people pay unaffordable rents than it is building homes. Those living in a social home are increasingly made to feel they should be grateful for owning one, even if this means living in a run-down, mouldy, damp, or even dangerous home in desperate need of repair. I have spent four years reporting on the crisis in housing conditions, and the state of some of Britain's housing stock is a stain on the country, homes that would not look out of place in a Dickens novel. Complaints too often go ignored. Where else are they going to go? Last week, a report by the Housing Ombudsman found 45% of Britain's social homes were built before 1964. And what happened to those homes that the state decided to sell at a heavy discount? Forty per cent are now private rentals, according to the New Economics Foundation, let out at maximum market price to the same kinds of families who 40 years ago would have rented from the state at a much more affordable rate. It isn't getting better either. Last year, England sold and demolished more social homes than it built. At a time when affordable housing is in desperate need, the country is still in negative equity. Successive governments have prioritised home ownership at the expense of everything else, but that's no longer working out either. The number of homeowners has been in steady decline since the early 2000s. Enter stage left: Rachel Reeves. The chancellor is under enormous pressure to halt five decades of decline and offer up cash to build more social homes, and fast. The Starmer government has promised to build 1.5 million homes by the next election. I can't find anyone across the housing sector who thinks they can achieve that, even with its plans to overhaul the planning system, but if they do, it will only be by building more social housing. The last time Britain built more than 300,000 homes in a year was 1977, when half were built by the state. This, of course, means money. Housing campaigners have been relentless in their lobbying of the Treasury to put money in the pipeline to ensure tens of thousands of new social homes are consistently built every year. The last government committed £11.5 billion to the affordable housing programme between 2021 and 2026, but 'affordable' includes shared ownership and rents at 80% of market value (social rentals are typically at 50%), which the vast majority of people on waiting lists cannot afford. The programme hasn't touched the sides when it comes to social housing delivery. Housing charities want to see billions more on top of that £11.5 billion figure. One chief executive told me an extra £12 billion is needed, but £6 billion would be a good start. An extra £12 billion would allow, charities estimate, around 45,000 social homes to be built each year. Last year, England built 9,866. Across the sector, it is widely agreed that 90,000 are needed each year just to keep up with current demand. 'For too long, governments have allowed thousands of social homes to be lost each year, while funnelling public money into so-called 'affordable homes' which are priced far out of reach for many,' Mairi MacRae, Director of Campaigns & Policy at Shelter, told me. 'The result has been record homelessness, and families, young people, and key workers priced out of their communities. 'Social homes are the only genuinely affordable homes by design because rents are tied to local incomes and are around two thirds lower than private rents…the government must commit to building 90,000 social rent homes a year for ten years.' One major bugbear for campaigners is the reluctance and/or refusal by Labour to say how many of the 1.5 million will be social homes. They want the Spending Review to be the moment where that changes. They want to see targets, and any money accounted for the affordable housing programme must, they say, stipulate how much is specifically for social housing. Matt Downie, chief executive of Crisis, told me: 'The spending review must be an opportunity for investment in new social homes to see homelessness levels come down. 'We need a clear commitment on the 90,000 new social homes required each year and a level of investment that starts the process of delivery to get there. Only then will we tackle head on the huge problem of temporary accommodation we currently face.' My colleague Robert Peston has reported the last few days on a stand-off between the chancellor and the Housing Secretary Angela Rayner, who herself grew up in social housing in Manchester. Before she entered government, she and I talked a lot about the desperate need for social homes, what it meant to her personally to have that safety net as a child and how she wants that for others. Rayner knows all the arguments laid out here, knows the statistics and the stories behind them. She understands them perhaps more than any minister that has ever worked in government. She is now in that age-old battle with the bean counters at Number 11, who, for decades, whichever party has been in charge, have not stumped up the cash to build houses. The country is now paying an enormous cost. In economic terms, building social housing is a smart use of public money. It is infrastructure that will last decades and in the medium to long term would save money, reducing that big housing benefit bill while dragging families out of poverty and unhealthy homes that are making them sick. Britain has undergone a 45-year experiment. By every measure, it has failed. Even the last Conservative government and its Housing Secretary, Michael Gove, said the failure to build social homes has been a mistake. There is now a political consensus on the need to end the experiment and build. Charities warn Britain is on a cliff edge. Refuse to intervene and the government risks ever-rising homelessness and councils going bankrupt trying to house those without anywhere to live. Wednesday's spending review has become D-Day for the housing market and for millions of families with nowhere to go.
The Guardian
9 hours ago
- The Guardian
Monday briefing: How the work of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira carries on, three years after their killing
Good morning. Last week marked the third anniversary of the disappearance of the longtime Guardian contributor Dom Phillips and the Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in the Amazon rainforest. They were found dead 10 days later, murdered as they tried to warn the world about the Amazon's destruction. In the time since, the environmental defenders and journalists who knew them have tried to secure their legacy, through projects to train a new generation of Indigenous activists to protect their home from organised crime and industrial deforestation – and through reporting. On Thursday, as part of that project, the first two episodes of a new Guardian podcast, Missing in the Amazon, were published; the third went up this morning. The series, an astonishingly evocative and diligent piece of work, is presented by Dom's friend and Guardian colleague, Tom Phillips. For today's newsletter, I spoke to Tom about the series – how it came about, the wrenching toll and deep consolations of putting it together, and the picture of the future of the rainforest that it presents. Here are the headlines. US politics | Tensions flared in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday as hundreds of US national guard troops were deployed by Donald Trump as thousands took to the streets to protest against an immigration crackdown. Teargas and 'less-lethal munitions' were used by police to disperse huge crowds, who surrounded civic buildings and blocked a freeway. California governor Gavin Newsome accused Trump of manufacturing a crisis. Israel-Gaza | The activists sending an aid ship into Gaza carrying climate activist Greta Thunberg accused Israel of forcibly intercepting the vessel and confiscating its cargo. Israel's defence minister, Israel Katz, said the passengers would be shown video of the 7 October attacks. UK economy | Rachel Reeves has been locked in a standoff over the policing and council budgets just days before this week's spending review, which is set to give billions to the NHS, defence and technology. Culture | Ministers have asked the British Council to draw up spending plans which would force it to close in as many as 60 countries, sources have told the Guardian. Environment | Environmental groups have welcomed government proposals to ban the destructive fishing practice known as bottom trawling in half of England's protected seas. A few weeks after Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira went missing, Tom sat down in Rio de Janeiro with João Laet, a photographer with deep experience of the Amazon who had also known Dom, and talked about what to do next. 'We did what journalists do,' he said. 'We decided to just report, to carry on, to do even more of it. A couple of weeks later, we were back in a different part of the Amazon – and we've been doing it ever since.' The podcast has been one of the centrepieces of Tom's part of that work. Over the last three years, he has travelled thousands of miles through the jungle by helicopter, plane, boat and on foot in an effort to understand what happened, and to shed new light on the stories that the two men thought were so important. The series presents a painstaking, beautifully attentive portrait of Dom and Bruno, and the powerful investigative thread of the search for their killers; meanwhile, the story of the violence done to the Amazon by organised crime and industrial deforestation, and the Indigenous people fighting to protect it, plays out in vivid detail. 'We wanted to make sure their lives and legacies were properly remembered,' Tom said. 'I hope they'd be proud of it.' Where threats to the Amazon stand today When Dom and Bruno went missing, the far-right demagogue Jair Bolsonaro was president of Brazil, and widely viewed as having nurtured the climate in which their attackers could feel they had impunity. Bolsonaro's defeat to the leftist former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva later that year was a genuine turning point for the Amazon, Tom said. 'Lula was accompanied at his inauguration by Raoni, one of Brazil's most revered Indigenous leaders. He appointed Marina Silva, a hugely respected environmentalist, as his environment minister. He gave Bruno's widow, Beatriz Matos, a top job in a new ministry for Indigenous peoples. He started putting resources into the environmental agency, so it could crack down on deforestation and crime. So all of that is very good news.' At the same time, he said, 'the fundamental fact is that lots of things haven't changed. Deforestation has come down massively – but there is still a great deal of destruction going on. You have a right-wing congress which is trying to undermine Indigenous rights and environmental protection. Organised crime has grown in the last few years.' And there is the prospect of a far-right successor to Bolsonaro prevailing in next year's presidential election. In the Javari valley, where Dom and Bruno were killed, Tom said 'all the activists I know still receive threats – every time I come home, I wonder if I'm going to see those people again.' He points to one bleak symbol in particular: a floating federal police base deployed to the valley, called New Era, which has subsequently been withdrawn. How Dom and Bruno's friends and allies responded to their deaths In a story published last week, and further explored later in the podcast series, Tom describes the extraordinary journey he and João Laet took deep into some of the most inaccessible territory in the Javari valley alongside members of the Indigenous patrol group that Bruno helped to found. The group, named Evu, works to train activists to protect the rainforest and rivers from poachers, fishers, miners and drug traffickers; against just a dozen members in 2021, there are 120 today, an expansion driven by the determination to secure Bruno's legacy. 'These are the same people without whom Dom and Bruno might never have been found,' Tom said. 'Three years ago, I was blown away by their skill, their dedication, their persistence. And now they're not just stepping up in the region, but exporting the model to other parts of the Amazon and Latin America.' The work is astonishingly gruelling: Tom describes joining the team as they carried two aluminium canoes on their shoulders on a hike of 100km in six days through dense rainforest. At the end of their journey, they provided the canoes – and training – to the last of their six mobile teams. Since coming back, 'I haven't been able to put a pair of shoes on for a week,' Tom said ruefully. 'My left knee isn't really bending properly. I fell in the river and lost my glasses. It's been slightly exhausting, but a privilege.' Meanwhile, a group of journalists led by Guardian global environment editor Jonathan Watts and Dom's widow Alessandra Sampaio has been at work on the project that Dom was engaged in when he died – the completion of a book called How to Save the Amazon, in which Bruno is an essential character. 'No reader should be in any doubt that these pages have been stained by blood,' Dom's co-authors write. 'The killers blasted a gaping wound in this book that is far too great for any infusion of solidarity to heal.' 'It's all part of the same project,' Tom said. 'I got my copy in Portuguese the other day. It was an incredibly uplifting thing to receive – this feeling that in some sense, Dom's mission had been accomplished.' Has the crime been solved? In July 2022, three men were charged with the murder of Dom and Bruno: Amarildo da Costa Oliveira and Jefferson da Silva Lima, who confessed to the killing but have argued that they acted in self-defence; and Oseney da Costa de Oliveira, who was accused of a lesser role, but who subsequently saw the charges dropped – though he is still under house arrest pending a possible new charge. But that left the question of why. In November last year, the alleged mastermind of the attack was charged with arming and funding those responsible. He was identified in Brazilian press reports as Ruben Dario da Silva Villar, a shadowy business person in the Javari Valley who has been accused of running an illegal poaching operation, money laundering, and drug smuggling, but never convicted. Others have been charged as accessories who helped to conceal the bodies. The fifth episode of the series will examine whether Dom and Bruno's deaths were the result of a wider conspiracy. Among Indigenous activists, 'There is a frustration that it has taken so long,' Tom said. 'There's a real worry that if the two fishers are convicted, it will just end there. People want to see proof of a real inclination from the authorities to dig into whether there were more powerful criminal figures behind the murders, and what they might reveal about the region's struggle with political and police corruption in a hugely important narco corridor for cocaine going from Peru to Europe.' What has it been like to tell Dom and Bruno's story? As he worked on the series, 'I thought a lot about the fact that Dom left his house one day for what he would not have seen as one of his most dangerous reporting trips, said goodbye, and never came back,' Tom said. 'So yes, it's been traumatic. But it's been therapeutic, too, to have the time and space to try to do this story justice.' There has been a deep poignancy in spending so much time talking to people about his friend – and even the parts of his story that were very far from the Amazon. 'We nearly always talked about our affection for Brazil, and the work of reporting here,' Tom said. But as the second episode of the series sets out, Dom had a whole other life in London in the 1990s, where he was editor of Mixmag, and a passionate connoisseur of dance music. 'I was only a teenager, but that was part of my world back then too,' Tom said. 'I really wish now that we had talked more about those days.' Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion As he says on the podcast, a thread runs through all of Dom's life, whether going toe-to-toe with a superstar DJ in a row over a coverline in the queue for Ministry of Sound or reporting deep in the Javari valley: 'The backbone, the commitment to his ideas. When Dom decided he cared about something, or that it really mattered, he went all-in. And in the end, that was what set him on the path to the Amazon.' After being told for decades that there was no market for her work, Bernardine Evaristo is now one of the most in-demand authors. I loved this interview with her, where she talks about how she's handled being thrust into the spotlight. Aamna Mercury prize-nominated singer Gwenno sings in Cornish and Welsh. She recently visited a school in Cornwall and used music to encourage the children to see Cornish as a living language. Katy Vans, newsletters team Labour's housebuilding agenda must prioritise social housing, writes Guardian columnist John Harris, warning that failing to build more council homes will deepen social decay and fuel dangerous right-wing forces. Aamna This fascinating essay by Alice Bolin argues for challenging the 'great man' theory of history … before our obsession with tech bros goes too far. Katy Looting and trafficking of Syria's antiquities has surged to unprecedented levels since rebels overthrew the former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in December, experts warn, putting the country's heritage further at risk. Aamna Tennis | Pulling off one of the greatest comebacks in the history of the sport, Carlos Alcaraz toppled the world No 1, Jannik Sinner, 4-6, 6-7 (4), 6-4, 7-6 (3), 7-6 (10-2) after five hours and 29 minutes to defend his French Open title in Paris. Cycling | Teenage prodigy Cat Ferguson came within a hair's breadth of executing a memorable overall win in her debut Tour of Britain, but was outsprinted by her rival Ally Wollaston at the climax of the final stage in Glasgow. Football | Thomas Tuchel has said his England players must accept his straight-talking criticisms if they are to advance to World Cup glory. The manager did not hold back after the lacklustre performance in the 1-0 qualifying win against Andorra in Barcelona on Saturday, questioning their attitude and body language. The Guardian leads with events in the US: 'Trump deploys national guard on LA streets in dramatic escalation'. The Financial Times reports 'Business chiefs head for Capitol Hill to fight Trump's foreign investment tax'. Looking ahead to the spending review, the Times has 'Cash boost to fight crime', while the Telegraph says 'Policing is broken, officers warn Reeves'. The i reports 'PIP benefit cuts may be softened to quash dissent against Reeves'. The Mail leads with an investigation, under the headline 'Visa scam that makes mockery of PM's pledge on migration', while the Sun looks at the cost of migrant hotels with 'InnSane'. The Mirror leads with 'Donor blood red alert'. Australia's mushroom murder trial Justice and courts reporter Nino Bucci talks through the trial that has gripped Australia – of the woman accused of murdering three of her relatives with poisoned mushrooms over a family meal. Sign up for Inside Saturday to see more of Edith Pritchett's cartoons, the best Saturday magazine journalism and an exclusive look behind the scenes A bit of good news to remind you that the world's not all bad The Scout Association has introduced a Money Skills badge to help young people gain practical financial literacy skills. Guardian Money observed members of a group of explorer scouts in London. Designed by Georgie Howarth, the badge incorporates the realities of managing money, forcing the group to adjust expectations based on their financial constraints. Young explorer scouts, some of whom already have part-time jobs or allowances, found the programme valuable, particularly in preparing them for real-life financial decisions. One participant noted that school lessons often focus on topics like mortgages, which feel irrelevant to teenagers, whereas the Scout badge 'made me feel more prepared for the real world'. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday And finally, the Guardian's puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply
