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Inflation is a global crisis

The UK is sliding into a social and economic crisis, the likes of which its people have not seen for decades. Household fuel bills are on course to top £2,400 by this autumn, while the price of a grocery shop is rocketing. Meanwhile, the economy is flatlining and the average employee’s pay keeps falling behind inflation, which hit 7 percent in March, the highest rate since 1992. No wonder that the charities and analysts that work on poverty and inequality are issuing such dire warnings. On one projection, one in three Britons — 23.5 million people — will be unable to afford the ...

War in Ukraine dilemmas

Thousands of civilians, including many children, were waiting to be evacuated to safety in the Kramatorsk railway station in eastern Ukraine on April 8 when two missiles, later reported to be cluster weapons that are banned under international law, exploded in their midst. At least 50 people died, and more than 100 others were injured. A message in Russian on the surviving casing of one missile read “For the children.” Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, understandably described the attack as the action of “an evil that has no limits.” Even amid so many other horrors in ...

‘Any road’

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” This paraphrasing of the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland books is one of those instances where the misquote is more common than the original. The late Beatle and Nahiku resident George Harrison even used the amended line as the refrain of his song, “Any Road,” which was released posthumously on his solo album, “Brainwashed,” in 2002. The story we heard is that Harrison was inspired to write the song when he spotted the observation on a handmade sign posted in a Hana friend’s ...

Gun violence increasing

The nation’s sickening toll of gun violence was made clear once again this weekend, when a barrage of bullets left bloodied bodies strewn in the street, just steps away from California’s state Capitol. Six people dead and a dozen injured. Families in mourning and a community riddled with grief. Though one suspect has been arrested, the public still knows very little about the who, what, why and how of the Sacramento shooting. What we do know is that it involved weapons that are horrifyingly ubiquitous in the United States and the source of so much death and destruction. While the ...

Insulin bill not a solution

The House moved last week to cap the cost of insulin, and Democrats think they’ve found a winner to save seats in November. What ghoul could oppose cheaper insulin? Alas the bill misdiagnoses the problem and is a pretext for more political control of drug prices, which won’t serve suffering Americans. The Affordable Insulin Now Act caps cost-sharing for insulin at $35 a month for diabetics with private insurance or on Medicare Part D. The bill’s Democratic sponsors call it “a critical drug pricing reform” to deal with “the skyrocketing cost of insulin.” The bill passed ...

Whose bright idea was that?

As head scratchers go, the U.S. Senate’s unanimous passage of the Sunshine Protection Act last month was a real doozy. Unanimous? Who knew that making daylight saving time permanent was the single pressing issue that could bridge our country’s political divide? Never mind pandemics, European invasions and homegrown insurrections, it appeared the only thing that could really bring our legislative branch together is an extra hour of evening light. The bill caught America by surprise. There were also reportedly quite a few senators left scratching their heads. The Sunshine ...