Struggling UK families are spending their evenings at McDonald’s to cut energy costs, The Guardian reported on Wednesday.

They do so amid the highest inflation rate in 40 years.

These families reportedly turn to places like McDonalds for free wi-fi, heat, and less-expensive food.

“People are buying their kids a Happy Meal for a few quid and keeping them warm inside. Then they wash and brush their teeth in the sinks and watch television for hours on the free wifi,” Matthew Cole of the Fuel Bank Foundation said, as quoted by The Guardian.

Jo Gilbert, the CEO of energy-focused advice charity Cubes, told the newspaper that “in reality, we’re way past using energy-saving tricks at home to limit bills significantly. People need government help now.”

An Ipsos UK survey published by Sky News on Tuesday indicated that 65% of Britons have refrained from turning on their heat in an effort to save money, and that one in four have even skipped meals.

The recent surge that brought consumer prices to their current 40-year high was driven by rising energy bills. The energy price cap for a typical British family rose by £693 (about $860) in April, a 54% increase.

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https://www.rt.com/news/555710-energy-costs-poor-crisis-uk/

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Two people were killed and at least eight were wounded in Chicago’s latest mass shooting, this one erupting when a fight escalated outside a McDonald’s fast-food outlet.

The shooting occurred around 10:40 pm local time on Thursday near Chicago Avenue and State Street, just a few blocks from the Windy City’s posh Magnificent Mile shopping district, according to police. Paramedics were seen wheeling stretcher after stretcher under police tape at the scene of the bloodshed, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The wounded were listed in serious to critical condition at local hospitals.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot called the shooting “an outrageous act of violence” and said she had ordered police to set up fixed posts of uniformed officers at the busy intersection where Thursday night’s incident occurred and at the nearby Red Line subway station.

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https://www.rt.com/news/555845-chicago-mass-shooting-near-mcdonalds/

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Former McDonald’s restaurants reopened in Russia with new branding and ownership on Sunday – the day that Russia Day is celebrated in the country.

The iconic golden arches logo of McDonald’s was taken down at restaurants across the country, and the sites reopened as ‘Vkusno i Tochka’, which roughly translates as ‘Just Tasty’.

A new logo has also been unveiled – a circle and two diagonal lines on a green background, resembling the letter ‘M’. According to the new owners, it represents a hamburger and two French fries.

Among the first to reopen will be the flagship site in Moscow’s Pushkin Square, where McDonald’s first opened in Russia in January 1990, symbolically marking the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War for many Russians. Early Sunday, the site included the slogan ‘The name changes, the love remains’.

Russian media reports suggest the menu of the chain will remain almost the same, but the names of the items will be different.

Last month, McDonald’s announced it was selling its restaurants in Russia to one of its licensees, Alexander Govor. It was far from the only big name to leave Russia after the launch of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine and the sweeping Western sanctions that followed. The fast-food chain had operated in the country for over 30 years.

According to the new owners, the restaurants will fully reopen across the country within two months, and the total number of locations will be expanded from the current 850 to 1,000.

McDonald’s, the world’s largest fast-food chain, has the right to buy back its restaurants in Russia within 15 years. Also, media reports say that a small number of McDonald’s restaurants will be able to continue working in Russia in their original form, as one of the company’s licensees, Rosinter Restaurants, has an agreement with the company that allows it to retain the franchise until 2023.

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https://www.rt.com/business/557018-mcdonalds-russia-new-name/

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Longevity as a discourse in Russian social policy documents

At the policy level, prolonging the life expectancy of citizens (and the term active longevity) gained increasing attention in the 1960s. The Institute of Gerontology, the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, founded in 1958, studied topics related to aging, and published Gerontology and Geriatrics Yearbooks that included a significant number of articles on aging (and active longevity). From 1959 onward, the Gerontology Department of the Moscow Society of Naturalists organized many conferences on aging and longevity that focused on the mechanisms of aging and ways to extend life. Moreover, Decree 63 on the develop- ment of biology in the USSR required the medical sciences to provide “theoretical bases and practical measures to increase the longevity of people and their working capacities” (Council of Ministers of the USSR, 1963). This decree would later manifest in a Soviet health policy stipulating that “scientific research in the field of medicine is devoted to caring for people’s health and ensuring they have a long, active life” (Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, 1969).

Preventive care has become an integral part of this active longevity policy. What began in the 1920s and 1930s as medical screening in local dispensaries gradually expanded into more dynamic regular monitoring of the health and working conditions of Soviet citizens (Belostocky et al., 2013). This necessarily involved increased state expenditure on health and social services for all sectors of the population, which, in turn, led to an explosion in the number of available medical specialists, health resorts, and health facilities (Stankov, 1960). Measures were taken to provide better access to information about hygiene and medicines to “prevent diseases, increase working capacities, and reach longevity” in the overall population at large (Ministry of Health of the USSR, 1964). By the 1970s, the basics of this system – known as “mass dispensarization” (i.e., regular health screenings and the early detection and treatment of diseases) – had been established. At the same time, medical and social services began to be widely discussed alongside issues of hygiene, proper nutrition, and a healthy, active lifestyle to promote longer, healthier, and more active lives (Frenkel, 1949; Golicinskaya, 1975; Lukianov, 1958; Mikulin, 1977; Nikitin, 1964). Later, the Soviet Union’s Constitution emphasized that the right to health care would be guaranteed by, among other things, “scientific research aimed at preventing and reducing morbidity and ensuring the long- term active life of citizens” (Supreme Soviet of the USSR, 1977, Article 42).

Employment and active longevity, and their ramifications for the collective good of society, became an essential topic for gerontologists and social policy researchers (Aleksandrova, 1974, Chebotarev, 1976; Frenkel, 1949). Meaningful work was discussed as both a prerequisite for good health and longevity (Stankov, 1960) and a source of satisfaction and joy (Nikitin, 1964). Frenkel adopted a comprehensive approach to active longevity, seeing it as a “collective interest” (Frenkel, 1949, p. 14) and pointing out that work routines could be adjusted to allow older people to share their valuable expertise while meeting their individual needs to contribute. Considerable research has also been conducted on working longevity within different occupations, genders, age groups, and localities (Aleksandrova, 1974; Chebotarev, 1976; Dyskin & Reshetyuk, 1988; Nikitin, 1964).

The social component of the active longevity discourse has covered the themes of social inclusion, positive relationships, and quality leisure time (Golicinskaya, 1975; Lukianov, 1958; Mikulin, 1977; Nikitin, 1964), with researchers perceiving high self-esteem, continuing activity, and an optimistic attitude as prerequisites for these benefits (Stankov, 1960). Since the 1950s and 1960s, a network of cultural centers across many localities and universities has been established to improve the quality of leisure time and promote political and scientific knowledge (e.g., Lipatov & Valkovsky, 2015; Pinaeva, 2014).

https://jyx.jyu.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/92021/

THIS ACTIVE UMBRELLA OF HEALTH MANAGEMENT IN RUSSIA HAS HELPED RUSSIAN PEOPLE BECOME MORE SELF-ASSURED. THIS IS WHY ONE HAS TO BE CIRCONSPECT WHEN "STUDYING" A VIEW POINT FROM A SOFT BUT RABID RUSSOPHOBIC ARTICLE:

The Russian Paradox: So Much Education, So Little Human Capital
By Nicholas Eberstadt
The American Enterprise

Ever since Nobel laureate T. W. Schultz’s foundational 1960 lecture on “human capital,” economists have documented the importance of “investing in human beings” and the crucial role that education plays in economic development.

Higher levels of educational attainment are associated with better health and lower mortality for both adults and children globally, even in countries where income levels remain relatively low. Further, education’s productivity-enhancing properties abet the rise of “service economies” and “knowledge economies.” Education, and the human capital it creates, lies at the heart of modern economic development.

Yet in Russia today, we see an exception to the seemingly global correspondence between educational attainment and human capital. Russia presents the curious counterexample of a country where high levels of education coexist with strikingly poor health profiles—where the population’s considerable schooling contributes only feebly to its “knowledge production” and skills-intensive international service sector.

This Russian paradox merits attention—and not for academic reasons alone. Understanding the economic and defense potential of this large and highly schooled population will be an increasingly pressing security question as the world heads into a second cold war.

International demographic and economic data illustrate the Russian paradox. I focus on Russian conditions on the eve of the coronavirus pandemic (i.e., circa 2019) rather than trends for the early 2020s, since the demographic and economic reverberations of the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine severely complicate any effort to compare Russian readings with more recent soundings from other countries.

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https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-russian-paradox-so-much-education-so-little-human-capital/

THE AMERICAN ENTERPRISE IS A NEOCONSERVATIVE THINK TANK THAT PROMOTES FREE-MARKET ECONOMICS... IT HAS A BIT OF HEARTBURN IN REGARD TO THE NEW TRUMPONOMICS (AND THIS IS A MONTH AGO... THINGS HAVE GONE FURTHER DOWNWARDS SINCE):

To put it simply, Donald Trump likes to think of himself as a problem solver, a man who uses the leverage the office affords him to fix what he sees as the predations of foreigners on the American people. Unfortunately, every problem he identifies is a nail, and his only hammer appears to be tariffs. 

The average Joe doesn’t think much about tariffs, or whether a Value Added Tax is a foreign tariff (it isn’t). The average Joe looks at the security of his job, and maybe the value of his investments, and hopes that things will be better tomorrow. And the average American’s once-high confidence in Donald Trump delivering those things has plummeted. (It doesn’t help that Trump has refused to rule out a recession.) 

Last week's Quinnipiac poll delivered the bad news: Less than two months in, 53 percent of Americans disapprove of Donald Trump’s performance, a drop of 11 points since January 29. Similarly, 58 percent disapprove of Trump’s handling of Canada, and 56 percent disapproved of his efforts on Mexico. And a CNN poll delivered a dismal 56 percent disapproval rating for Donald Trump’s economic policies (his worst rating in this particular poll, including during his first term).

Donald Trump argues that he is rebuilding the economy, reshaping it, and reducing government spending and that that’s going to cause pain. The problem, retorts Strain, is that he’s not doing that. In the first instance, all of the changes being instituted by the White House, like them or not, are being made through Executive Orders, not by law. And thus, as Trump ripped up Biden’s EOs, his successor will be able to rip up his. 

Then there’s DOGE. While the legacy media is obsessed with the plaints of AID employees and other entitled DC denizens with federal sinecures, the real challenge for Elon Musk is that the bulk of federal spending is in entitlements. And Trump has deemed those untouchable. Absent a willingness to address Social Security’s impending bankruptcy, as well as exploding Medicare and Medicaid costs, cutting development spending and recouping overhead from medical centers isn’t going to make a dent in federal spending. Especially when the President wants to end taxes on social security, tips, and much else. 

Is Donald Trump kicking butt on immigration? Yep. Is he keeping promises on DEI? He sure is. Is he shepherding the economy towards full employment and growth? Not by my math. And the uncertainty and capriciousness are a killer. The good news for DJT is that it will not be difficult to right the ship… as long as the president recognizes there are icebergs ahead.

https://whatthehellisgoingon.substack.com/p/wth-is-donald-trump-doing-to-the

SEE ALSO: https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/44600

https://database.earth/population/russian-federation/life-expectancy

https://database.earth/population/australia/life-expectancy

https://database.earth/population/united-states-of-america/life-expectancy

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.