What happened on 10th July 2023 - With your comments in the Web

On Monday, it turned out that a UK government regulator has failed to publish a key survey of oil and chemical spills in British seas for three years because the expert who compiled it retired.

The body responsible for pollution in UK waters, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), used to publish an annual survey of all spills of “hazardous and noxious substances” into the sea, by boats and the oil industry.

As well as making this data available to the public, the MCA says the survey helps its counter pollution team do its job. Spills of oil and chemicals at sea have the potential to kill wildlife, destroy habitats and contaminate beaches.

But the report – which was compiled by the expert Advisory Council on Protection of the Sea (ACOPS) for the previous 40 years – has not been published since 2020, with the most recent available data from 2017. 

In response to a freedom of information (FOI) request by The Ferret asking for new data, the MCA said the gap in reporting was because of the “long-term unavailability of the author, his subsequent retirement and the major restructuring of the ACOPS committee”. 

"The suspicious me reads this as 'only one person knew how massage the figures into something acceptable'."

"I wouldn't attribute malice to what can be explained with incompetence. And MCA is famous for laughably low salaries and lack of competence."

"This is ridiculous. It was very much in the public interest to release this report and yet they don't."

"As someone who deals with MCA on semi-regular basis it doesn't surprise me. It is astonishing how quickly this organization has fallen but it reflects the state of the maritime industry as a whole.

My licence renewal that was supposed to take 2 weeks, took about 12 because they've simply forgotten about my application.

MCA, on average, pays 3 to 4 times less than the industry standard so it is not surprising they can't find a person willing to take this job. MCA salaries are somewhat of a running joke in the maritime industry, Aldi Manager, on average, earns more than a senior Manager at MCA."

Also on Monday, the outgoing president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) warned that racism is “a stain on the NHS” and tackling it is key to recruiting and retaining staff.

The health service has a moral, ethical and legal duty to do more to stamp out racism, Dr Adrian James was expected to say at the college’s international congress in Liverpool. He cited pay gaps, disparities in disciplinary processes and a “glass ceiling” for doctors from minority ethnic backgrounds who want to progress into management positions as problems in the NHS that are linked to racism.

In his farewell speech on Monday after three years in the role, James said: “Institutional racism is rife in society and the NHS is not immune. We see its pernicious effects on colleagues who are leaving the NHS in droves.

Last month, the NHS Race and Health Observatory, which was formed in 2021 to examine disparities in health and social care based on race, said better anti-racism policies could strengthen the NHS workforce.

The RCP agreed that “better care, training and anti-racist policies” would increase staff numbers in the NHS, and that this would “improve patient experience and save millions of pounds spent annually on addressing racism claims brought by staff, clinicians and patients”.

 

"At this point should we be asking what isn't racist in the UK?"

"It's really hard to take "institutional racism" claims seriously any more. It just seems to be a case of organisations paying lip service to the phenomenally fashionable (and tedious) Critical Race Theory. A core tenet of which being that racism (of institutional and every other variety) is a disease that has infected every part of white majority societies."

"Have I got this right? The most racially diverse organisation in the world (probably) is institutionally racist. Well that's enough internet for me today."

"honestly we spent more than 2 weeks in hospital recetly with over 20 appointments leading up to it and a very small minority of people we saw were white."

That day either, the government's official advisers said that the UK should quit a controversial energy treaty to stop it delaying vital climate action and triggering huge taxpayer payouts to fossil fuel companies.

 

The energy charter treaty (ECT) is a system of secret courts that enables companies to sue governments over policies that would cut their future profits. Companies have sued over phasing out coal-fired power stations, ending offshore oil drilling and banning fracking. The UK’s Climate Change Committee said Britain should withdraw from the ECT because recently proposed reforms did not go far enough.

The UK and Japan are the only major economies not to have committed to exiting the ECT. France, Germany, Spain and others have already said they will leave and the EU is set to pull out en masse after saying that staying would “clearly undermine” climate targets.

 Redditors agreed with this statement.

""The energy charter treaty (ECT) is a system of secret courts that enables companies to sue governments over policies that would cut their future profits."

Sorry, what? Yes, please withdraw from this, immediately.

France, Germany, Spain have already said they will leave and with the UK continuing to miss targets for climate action I don't see how staying in can be considered remotely tenable."

"Considering what's at stake here (i.e. the continued survival of human civilisation), the attempt by fossil fuel companies to undermine climate change action is the most monstrous evil in history. Of course we should leave the ECT."

"From reading the article. It sounds as though this was , initially, set up for good reasons (protect against a potentially hostile Soviet Union) but has not run its course and is incredibly dangerous and only protects a few well off companies.

Scrap it"