July 9, 2020
In his summer statement Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced over £3 billion of funding to create green jobs, most of it focussing on the private sector where a Green Homes Grant will pay £2 for every £1 spent by owners or landlords on energy efficiency, up to a limit of £5,000. For those on low incomes, the scheme will pay up to £10,000. The scheme aims to upgrade over 600,000 homes across England, “saving households hundreds of pounds per year on their energy bills.”
Continue reading “The Budget was a kick-start, but we need to accelerate on home energy upgrades”
Category: Housing, Energy and the environment | Tags: housing finance, housing investment, energy efficiency |
July 5, 2020
Few people have a detailed grasp of how housing finance works in the UK, across the private market and social housing. My friend David Garnett, who has died aged 77, was not only one of these but had the skill to make a complex subject accessible to students.
Continue reading “David Garnett obituary”
Category: Housing, Obituaries | Tags: housing finance |
July 5, 2020
Pro-government marchers at Mother’s Day March, May 30, 2018. Photo: El 19 Digital
A report issued at the end of May repeats allegations of government repression in Nicaragua during violent protests in 2018. It was commissioned by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), a body of the Organization of American States (OAS), and revives arguments that the Sandinista government is violating human rights. It purports to provide new evidence, but in reality the facts are more complicated than the report suggests. They warrant careful examination to ensure that the international community is getting the full, unadulterated story.
Continue reading “Revisiting 2018 Mother’s March in Nicaragua: New report repeats old bias”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, US intervention, Nicaragua crisis, human rights |
June 10, 2020
“They build dams and kill people.” These words, spoken by a witness when the murderers of environmental defender Berta Cáceres were brought to trial in Honduras, describe Desarrollos Energéticos SA (DESA), the company whose dam project Berta opposed. DESA was created in May 2009 solely to build the Agua Zarca hydroelectric scheme, using the waters of the Gualcarque River, regarded as sacred by the Lenca communities who live on its banks. As Nina Lakhani makes clear in her book Who Killed Berta Cáceres?, DESA was one of many companies to benefit from the 2009 coup d’état in Honduras, when the left-leaning President Manuel Zelaya was deposed and replaced by a sequence of corrupt administrations. The president of DESA and its head of security were both US-trained former Honduran military officers, schooled in counterinsurgency. By 2010, despite having no track record of building dams, DESA had already obtained the permits it needed to produce and sell electricity, and by 2011, with no local consultation, it had received its environmental licence.
Continue reading “Nina Lakhani’s “Who Killed Berta Cáceres?”: Life, Death, and Legacy of a Courageous Honduran Indigenous Leader”
Category: Latin America, Energy and the environment, Book reviews | Tags: Honduras, drugs, US intervention, Berta Cáceres, env
May 31, 2020
Members of the 300-strong sanitation squad who work for the Managua city council, www.el19digital.com
Every country in the world is trying to balance its fight against the virus with the need to have a functioning economy, and there is plenty of debate about what the balance should be. The world’s poorer countries face the toughest challenge, because a high proportion of their populations engage in a daily struggle to earn enough to eat, whether in small businesses or the informal economy. In Nicaragua, around 80% of people make their living in this way.[1]
Continue reading “Nicaragua battles COVID-19 and a Disinformation Campaign”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, Nicaragua crisis, coronavirus |
May 2, 2020
A government worker cleans a market in Managua to combat the coronavirus. Carlos Cortez, El19
“He’s not a doctor, I don’t think.” Trump had just finished a phone call with Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), the de facto president of Honduras who runs a narco-state. On April 30, JOH was indirectly implicated in drug and murder charges by the US Justice Department in a case against a former chief police officer. This is merely the latest of several cases in which he is alleged to be involved, that include drug trafficking and money laundering, as well as protection of drug dealers. The criminal charges have also affected his close family, among them his brother, including connections of both siblings with famous narco-dealer El Chapo. His sister, Hilda Hernández, was also under investigation in Honduras for embezzlement of public funds, at the time she died in a helicopter accident.
Continue reading “COVID-19 as a pretext for repression”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, drugs, US intervention, El Salvador, panama, coronavirus
May 2, 2020
Nicaragua’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic is the subject of correspondence in the medical journal, The Lancet. A letter from 13 health professionals, based in the USA (except for one in Costa Rica), criticised the Nicaraguan government’s response to the COVID-19 epidemic as ‘careless’ and ‘perhaps the most erratic of any country in the world to date’. My response is reproduced here. They then replied, but did not address most of the key points I made in examining their original arguments. They quote the Pan-American Health Organisation as criticising Nicaragua – but while there is specific disagreement on the advisability of a national ‘lockdown’, the Nicaraguan government has been working closely with the PAHO (part of the World Health Orgainsation) since a joint commission was established to confront the epidemic on January 30, when it was one of the first countries outside Asia to recognise the potential impact of the virus.
Continue reading “‘Love in the time of COVID-19’ – a cynical analysis of Nicaragua’s efforts to combat the epidemic”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, coronavirus
April 18, 2020
A friend in Managua, Paul Baker, holds up one of the leaflets his family was given after a visit by a health brigade
The right-wing opposition in Nicaragua, having failed in their attempted coup in 2018, still looks at any potential crisis as a new opportunity to attack the Sandinista government. Their latest chance, of course, arrived with the coronavirus pandemic. Even though the virus has barely hit the country yet, the government is under attack. The international media are lapping up opposition propaganda and ignoring or disparaging the government’s efforts to deal with the coming crisis, even though preparations began before those in many other countries.
Continue reading ““Never let a good crisis go to waste””
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, Nicaragua crisis, coronavirus
March 24, 2020
Nicaraguan border post Photo: Orlando Miranda, from www.el19digital.com
The coronavirus epidemic is still in its early stages in Central America but it has already put a focus on Costa Rica’s dependency on workers from Nicaragua. At any one time there are around 400,000 Nicaraguans working in the neighbouring country, especially doing building work, domestic work, as security guards or in agriculture. Given that a large proportion are undocumented, the real figure could be much higher, a very significant addition to Costa Rica’s population of under five million people. Yet the Vice-President of Costa Rica, Epsy Campbell, made a call this month to employers to persuade their Nicaraguan workers to stay put over the coming Easter holidays when otherwise they might leave to see their families. She was clearly worried about the impact on Costa Rica’s economy if workers left the country and were unable to return because of the restrictions at the border resulting from the coronavirus epidemic.
Continue reading “As the coronavirus strikes, Nicaraguans in Costa Rica are urged to stay”
Category: Latin America | Tags: Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Nicaragua crisis, coronavirus
March 10, 2020
March 11 is Budget day, and the housing lobby is right to feel anxious about what it will reveal. Despite some increases in funding by the last government, the current affordable homes programme is worth just £1.5 billion a year. In real terms it’s only one third of what it was a decade ago. Surely this tiny sum can’t be squeezed any further?
Continue reading “The housing sector is right to feel anxious about tomorrow’s Budget”
Category: Housing | Tags: housing finance, housing investment
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on