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Pupils' vision of Greenland's future

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Press articles about Greenland's foreseeable future

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Through a commented example

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The 34 pupils described shortly by themselves

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Short self-description of the French pupils

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Upcoming films

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Presentation of the Pupils' favorite Places around the World

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New York Times' editorialist Nicholas Kristof laments over a broken social escalator

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Oxfam 2014 survey - Time to End Extreme Inequality

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Oxfam 2014 survey - Time to End Extreme Inequality

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Number of billionaires doubled since financial crisis as inequality spirals out of control

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Rising inequality could set the fight against poverty back by decades, Oxfam warned today as it published a new report showing that the number of billionaires worldwide has more than doubled since the financial crisis.

The report, Even it Up: Time to End Extreme Inequality, details how the richest people in the world have more money than they could spend in several lifetimes while hundreds of millions live in abject poverty. The richest 85 people - who Oxfam revealed in January have the same wealth as the poorest half of the world's population - saw their collective wealth increase by $668 million every day over the last year. That's almost half a million dollars every minute.

Oxfam is calling on governments around the world to Even it Up by taking action to level the playing field by implementing policies that redistribute money and power to ensure the poor benefit more directly. Governments should follow a seven point plan to stem the rising tide of inequality - including clamping down on tax dodging and investing in universal, free health and education.

The report, endorsed by the Bank of England Chief Economist Andrew Haldane, Graça Machel, Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Nobel prize- winning economist Joseph Stiglitz among others, is the opening salvo of a new Oxfam campaign, also called Even it Up, to push world leaders to turn rhetoric into reality and close the gap between rich and poor.

Mark Goldring, Oxfam's Chief Executive, said: "Inequality is one of the defining problems of our age. In a world where hundreds of millions of people are living without access to clean drinking water and without enough food to feed their families, a small elite have more money than they could spend in several lifetimes.

"The consequences of extreme inequality are harmful to everyone - it robs millions of people of better life chances and fuels crime, corruption and even violent conflict. Put simply, it is holding back efforts to end poverty.

"Governments around the world have been guilty of a naive faith that wealth going to those at the top will automatically benefit everyone. That's not true - it is their responsibility to ensure the poorest are not left behind."

In addition to tackling tax dodging and investing in public services, Oxfam is calling on governments to:

- Introduce equal pay legislation and promote economic policies to give women a fair deal

- Agree a global goal to tackle inequality

- Introduce minimum wages and move towards a living wage for all workers

- Share the tax burden fairly, shifting taxation from labour and consumption towards capital and wealth

- Ensure adequate safety-nets for the poorest, including a minimum income guarantee.

Oxfam's report says that the number of billionaires in the world more than doubled to 1,645 between 2009 and 2014; evidence that whilst those at the top have recovered quickly from the financial crisis, the benefits of economic growth are not being shared with the vast majority.

As an illustration of the extent of extreme inequality in the world today, Oxfam calculated that if you were to tax billionaires just 1.5% of their wealth over $1bn it could raise $74bn a year, enough to fill the annual gaps in funding needed to get every child into school and to deliver health services in the world's poorest countries. Since 2009, at least one million women have died in childbirth due to a lack of basic health services and around the world 57 million children are currently missing out on school.

There are 16 billionaires in Sub-Saharan Africa living alongside the 358 million people in extreme poverty, and in South Africa inequality is now greater than it was at the end of apartheid. If African countries continue on their current growth trajectory with no change in levels of income inequality, then it is estimated that the continent's poverty rate won't fall below 3 percent - the World Bank's definition of ending poverty - until 2075.

Mark Goldring said: "Extreme inequality is far from being inevitable - it is the result of political choices and economic fashion, kept in place by a wealthy elite whose influence helps keep the rules rigged in their favour. Too often, the 'invisible hand of the market' is used as an excuse to pick the pockets of the poor.

"In countries around the world, a wealthy minority are taking an ever-increasing share of the pie. This is not just an issue of fairness, but in a world where people are dying of hunger or because they can't afford healthcare, it becomes an issue of life and death."

Whilst it is necessary to offer fair reward for talent and hard work and to encourage innovation and enterprise, there is growing consensus - from the IMF, World Bank and World Economic Forum, to the Pope and President Obama - that today's extreme levels of inequality are both economically and socially damaging. Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England has warned that "unchecked market fundamentalism" is a threat to the future dynamism of capitalism.

Endorsing the Even it Up report, Andrew Haldane said: "In highlighting the problem of inequality Oxfam not only speaks to the interests of the poorest people but also the wider collective interest: there is rising evidence that extreme inequality harms, durably and significantly, the stability of the financial system and growth in the economy. It slows development of the human, social and physical capital necessary for raising living standards and improving well-being. That penny is starting to drop among policymakers and politicians."

Her Eminence Graça Machel said of the Even It Up report: "The last decades have seen incredible human progress - across Africa and the world. But this progress is under threat from the scourge of rapidly rising inequality.

"Addressing the gap between the richest people and the poorest and the impact this gap has on other pervasive inequalities between men and women and between races that make life for those at the bottom unbearable is an imperative of our times. Too many children born today have their future held hostage by the low income of their parents, their gender and their race.

"The good news is that this growing inequality is not inevitable. It can be resolved."

/Ends

For more information, or for a copy of the report, please contact: Sarah Dransfield on 01865 472269 / 07767 085636 / sdransfield@oxfam.org.uk or Jon Slater on 01865 472249 / 07876 476403 / jslater@oxfam.org.uk
Notes to editors
Oxfam's calculated figure - that if you were to tax billionaires just 1.5% of their wealth over $1bn it could raise $74bn a year - is for 2014.

The annual gap for providing key health services (including specific interventions such as maternal health, immunisation for major diseases like HIV/ AIDS, TB and malaria, and for significant health systems strengthening to see these and other interventions delivered) in 2015 is $37bn a year according to WHO.

The annual gap for providing universal basic education, according to UNESCO, is $26bn a year.

According to the Forbes Rich List, the number of global billionaires was 793 in 2009, at the end of the financial crisis. Since then, the number has more than doubled to 1645.

If Carlos Slim, the world's richest man, were to cash in all his wealth and spend $1m every day, it would take him 220 years to spend all of his money. But in reality the interest on his wealth, even in a modest savings account, would make him an extra $4.3 m every day.

The 10 richest people on the planet, according to Forbes (as of Aug 2014) are:

Carlos Slim Helu and family (Mexico)

Bill Gates (USA)

Amancio Ortega (Spain)

Warren Buffett (USA)

Larry Ellison (USA)

Charles Koch (USA)

David Koch (USA)

Liliane Bettencourt and family (France)

Christy Walton and family (USA)

Sheldon Adelson (USA)

Oxfam's research in early 2014 found that the 85 richest individuals in the world have as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population, based on the wealth of the 85 billionaires at the time of the annual Forbes report in March 2013. In the period of a year from March 2013 to March 2014 their wealth has risen again by a further 14 percent, or $244bn. This equates to a $668m-a-day increase.

List of those who have endorsed the Even It Up: Time to End Extreme Inequalit y report:

Graça Machel, Founder of the Foundation for Community Development in Mozambique, UN independent expert on the impact of armed conflict on children, and founding member of The Elders; Kofi Annan, Chair of the Africa Progress Panel, former Secretary-General of the United Nations and Nobel Laureate; Professor Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia University, winner of Nobel Prize for Economics; Nawal El Saadawi, Egyptian writer and activist; Andrew Haldane, Chief Economist, Bank of England; Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University; Rosa Pavanelli, Secretary General, Public Services International; Ha-Joon Chang, Economist at the University of Cambridge; Jay Naidoo, Chair of the Board of Directors and Chair of the Partnership Council, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition; Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, Co-authors of The Spirit Level; Michael J. Sandel, author of What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets; Kevin Watkins, Executive Director, Overseas Development Institute; Mark Thomas, Partner and Head of Strategy, PA Consulting Services; Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru university; Amina J Mohammed Special, Advisor of the UN Secretary-General on Post-2015 Development Planning.

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Number of billionaires doubled since financial crisis as inequality spirals out of control - Oxfam | Blogs | Oxfam GB

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Rising inequality could set the fight against poverty back by decades, Oxfam warned today as it published a new report showing that the number of billionaires worldwide has more than doubled since the financial crisis.

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Today’s key fact: you are probably wrong about almost everything - article advised by Raph Ligtenberg

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Britons overstate the proportion of Muslims in their country by a factor of four, according to a new survey by Ipsos Mori that reveals public understanding of the numbers behind the daily news in 14 countries.

People from the UK also think immigrants make up twice the proportion of the population as is really the case - and that many more people are unemployed than actually are.

Such misconceptions are typical around the world, but they can have a significant impact as politicians aim to focus on voter perceptions, not on the actual data.

Bobby Duffy, managing director of the Ipsos Mori social research institute, said:

These misperceptions present clear issues for informed public debate and policymaking. For example, public priorities may well be different if we had a clearer view of the scale of immigration and the real incidence of teenage mothers.

The actual percentage of Muslims in the UK is 5%, but those surveyed by Ipsos Mori said they thought it was 21%.

Britons meanwhile underestimate the proportion of Christians, believing it is 39% when the correct figure is 59%.

People in the US similarly overestimate the proportion of Muslims in the population, thinking it is 15% when it is actually 1%. They believe 56% are Christian when the true figure identifying themselves as such is 78%.

On immigration, British people think on average that immigrants make up 24.4% of the population when it is actually about 13%, according to the 2011 census.

According to Ipsos Mori's political monitor from September, 30% of British voters identified asylum and immigration as one of the issues that would be very important to them come next May's elections. This puts immigration, alongside the economy and the NHS, at the top of voters' concerns. The 14 countries surveyed all overestimated immigration to a certain degree.

If anything the overall data shows the UK in a comparatively favourable light. Britain is the fifth least ignorant nation out of the 14 surveyed, and Britons showed more self-knowledge than Australians, Belgians, Canadians and French people.

Italians were the most ignorant among those polled, while Swedes were the best informed. It is probably not a coincidence that trust in politics - by one measure at least, voter turnout - is high and stable in Sweden, and falling in Italy.

The majority of the countries Ipsos Mori surveyed also got it wrong on issues such as unemployment (usually overestimated), voter turnout (usually underestimated) and murder rates (a mix).

Britons believe 24% of people are unemployed, an estimate over three times higher than the actual rate.

But each country has its blind spots. Germans think teen pregnancy is 35 times worse than it is (0.4% of girls aged 15-19 give birth each year there). South Koreans believe their life expectancy is 89 (it's actually 80) and Spain is the only country to underestimate its youth unemployment rate, which stands at a pretty extreme 56%.

Australia is among the countries where people are mistakenly likely to say the murder rate is rising, while the UK is one of the only places that gets this specific metric right.

These miscalculations will resonate very differently depending on other factors. One of these is the saliency of issues - the more a voter believes an issue to be important, the more they are likely to vote for a party they trust on that issue. The most recent Eurobarometer, an EU-wide survey carried out by TNS, found that immigration was a top-three issue of concern for voters in the UK, Malta, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Denmark, Bulgaria and Belgium.

As in Britain, about 13% of the population in Germany are immigrants but Germans think the figure is actually about 10 percentage points higher.

Yet a study by the German Marshall Fund from 2013 found that 64% of people in the UK see immigration as a problem compared to 29% who see it as an opportunity.

In Germany those numbers flip almost perfectly, with just 32% seeing immigration as a problem compared to 62% viewing it as an opportunity.

Last week, Angela Merkel's CDU party organised a summit for immigrants, and the German chancellor spoke of the importance of immigration and of Germany as a "country of integration".

By contrast, over the weekend, the UK's defence secretary, Michael Fallon, talked about British towns being "swamped" by immigrants in controversial comments that he was forced to row back from.

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A Ukip poster. Photograph: Ukip/PA

It is one thing for public opinion to be shaped by the perception of issues and another when politicians choose to make promises and write policies to feed and satisfy misconceptions.

As Duffy puts it:

The real peril of these misperceptions is how politicians and policymakers react. Do they try to challenge people and correct their view of reality or do they take them as a signal of concern, the result of a more emotional reaction and design policy around them?

Clearly the ideal is to do a bit of both - politicians shouldn't misread these misperceptions as people simply needing to be re-educated and then their views will change - but they also need to avoid policy responses that just reinforce unfounded fears.

Topics

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Today's key fact: you are probably wrong about almost everything

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Britons overstate the proportion of Muslims in their country by a factor of four, according to a new survey by Ipsos Mori that reveals public understanding of the numbers behind the daily news in 14 countries.

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Get the plan of every History and Geography lesson

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History and Geography Lessons' Tables Of Content  -  Seconde SIA

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A striking National Geographic video - A world of 7 billion people poses many challenges, and countless opportunities to make a positive difference.

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Daily routine of a medieval town dweller

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Medieval - Portrait - Payday in medieval times
The payment of salaries to the church the night watchmen in the "Camera del Comune" to Sien. 1460. Via Rijksmuseum.
The Angelus bell rang to announce the first Mass of the day and the end of the night watchman's duty
Archbishop Arundel preaching in Canterbury Cathedral, A.D. 1399, about the wrongs done to Henry of Lancaster and reading from a fabricated Papal Bull. British Library MS Harley 1319, f.12.
Gustave Brion,
Outside the church
, 1864, watercolor, 15,7 × 23,7 cm, Baltimore, Walters Art Museum
4 A.M.
6 A.M.
8 A.M.
9 A.M.
3 P.M.
8 P.M.
Shops and market stalls opened
Foreign merchants were allowed to start trading

Breakfast
- The word literally refers to breaking the fasting period of the prior night. It has its origin in the Judeo-Christian custom of fasting from food between the supper meal of one day and the morning meal of the next.
Most shops and market stalls closed
Curfew Bell...
....town gates closed...
...houses shut up...
...the night watch began
A day in the life of
a medieval town

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Medieval - Portrait - Payday in medieval timesThe payment of salaries to the church the night watchmen in the "Camera del Comune" to Sien. 1460. Via Rijksmuseum. The Angelus bell rang to announce the first Mass of the day and the end of the night watchman's dutyArchbishop Arundel preaching in Canterbury Cathedral, A.D.

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10 Things to Know about Life in Medieval Towns

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Ten things to know about
life in a town
in the Middle Ages
1.
A medieval town would seek a charter giving it the right to become a borough. The rich merchants would then be allowed to choose a mayor and hold a market.
2.
Houses were made of a wooden frame, with the gaps filled with woven strips of wood, known as 'wattle', and covered, or 'daubed', with clay and horse-dung. Most roofs were thatch.
3.
Medieval shops were workshops, open to the street for customers, with the craftsman's house above. Because few people could read, shops signs were a huge model showing the craftsman's trade. People of the same trade often worked in the same street.
4.
The streets of a medieval town were narrow and busy. They were noisy, with the town crier, church bells, and traders calling out their wares. There were many fast food sellers, selling such things as hot sheep's feet and beef-ribs.
5.
Nobody was supposed to carry a weapon or wear a mask.
6.
At dusk, a bell rang for curfew, when everyone was supposed to shut up their house. The gates to the town would be closed, and a watch would patrol the streets looking for thieves, and apprentices who had stayed out late.
7.
Criminals were put in the pillory. These were wooden boards with holes for feet, hands or head. Medieval punishments were cruel, and crimes such as theft were punished by hanging.
8.
In November the poor of the town would elect a 'lord of misrule', who would wear a paper crown and get up to mischief. At Christmas poor people would go round town demanding traders give them charity.
9.
Holy Days would be marked by colorful processions, as the different guilds competed to make the best display.
10.
If a serf ran away from his village to a town and remained free for a year and a day, he could become a 'freeman' of the town.

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life in a town in the Middle Ages, here are ten things

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Ten things to know about life in a town in the Middle Ages 1. A medieval town would seek a charter giving it the right to become a borough. The rich merchants would then be allowed to choose a mayor and hold a market.2.

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Why heading towards sustainability is not that easy

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Political institutions of the Athenian democracy

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Political institutions of the Athenian democracy

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How did it work in the 5th century B.C.?

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A look at the reality of wealth distribution in the United States

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Why being a greedy meat eater is not good for our planet!

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THE MEAT ISSUE Environmental impacts greenhouse gas emissions fossil energy use water use water quality changes effects on grazed ecosystems Health-related problems cancer heart disease bacterial contamination Ethics of eating meat objections to the act of killing animals some animals' flesh taboo agricultural practices used in meat production religious traditions

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