Germany Shut Down Thousands of Air-Raid Shelters. It Needs New Ones Fast.
Of about 2,000 bunkers and air-raid shelters operational during the Cold War, only 580 remain, offering space for 480,000 people, or half a percent of Germany's population. Even this figure is largely theoretical.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
31 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Democratic socialist in Maryland legislature ready to ‘fight like hell,' says party moving in his direction
BALTIMORE — As self-described 'Democratic socialist' candidates are seeing greater success in races around the country, one Maryland lawmaker who embraces the label believes Democratic Party voters are shifting in his direction. Del. Gabe Acevero, a 34-year-old member of the Democratic Socialists of America, represents Montgomery County in the Maryland General Assembly. He was first elected in 2018 — long before Zohran Mamdani and Omar Fateh gained national attention for winning the Democratic mayoral primary in New York City and an endorsement from the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in Minneapolis' mayoral race, respectively. As the electorate becomes younger and more progressive, Acevero said that establishment Democrats should 'be cognizant' of what that constituency wants if it plans to win elections. 'If you look at where our base, where our constituency and where America is trending, we have to focus on working-class issues — from housing to socioeconomic, gender, environmental, justice — and we can't just continue to provide lip service as a party,' he said. 'We have to fight like hell, not just for the policies, but for workers and the working class. And that's what I've been committed to in the legislature and will continue to do so.' Del. Matt Morgan, a Republican from St. Mary's County, said he knows Acevero well and considers him 'a nice guy.' He said it's 'undeniable' that the Democratic Party is shifting in Acevero's direction. And, in fact, 'it's already there,' Morgan said. He thinks the push into socialism is ultimately a losing proposition for Maryland voters. 'Socialism has a 100% failure rate. The more it's implemented in Maryland, the more people are going to leave,' Morgan said. Recent elections in New York and Minnesota are perhaps indications that the word 'socialism' does not carry the same negative connotation among voters today — especially among Generation Z and younger millennials born after the Cold War, according to Flavio Hickel, an associate professor of political science at Washington College. These voters, and others who increasingly identify as 'working class,' believe Democrats 'need to offer a more ambitious, aggressive, and left-leaning' policy vision, Hickel told The Baltimore Sun on Wednesday. 'I don't think mainstream Democrats would regard what [Acevero] said as probably all that offensive or problematic,' Hickel said. 'They just might differ in sort of, the tactics — how far, how quick and how aggressively do we pursue progressive change?' A staff member for the Maryland Democratic Party did not immediately respond to The Sun's request for comment on Acevero's claims that Democrats are moving in his direction. What a Democratic socialist wants in Maryland Acevero's campaign platform has often leaned progressive: police and criminal justice reform, a $15-per-hour minimum wage, single-payer Medicare For All, universal basic income, higher taxes for the wealthy, and support for kids aging out of the foster care system. 'I think, at the time, a lot of people were trying to, essentially, discourage Democratic voters in District 39 from voting for me, because [they thought], 'these are like radical socialist policies,'' said Acevero. 'In actuality, what they are are popular policies that working people in our state want to see enacted, and so we ran a — similar to Zohran [Mamdani] — a people-powered campaign.' Like Mamdani, Acevero has been vocal in his support of Palestinians in the Gaza war against Israel during his time in the state legislature. In 2025, he introduced the Not On Our Dime Act, which would have required the Maryland Secretary of State to remove nonprofit organizations from the state's Registry of Charitable Solicitation if they knowingly engage in unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity. That bill was heard in the House Judiciary Committee, but not debated on the floor. Acevero also sponsored a joint resolution in 2024 that would have conveyed to Maryland's congressional delegation that the General Assembly supports a long-term ceasefire in Israel and Palestine. The joint resolution was heard in the Rules and Executive Nominations Committee, but did not advance further. 'I've been very unapologetic' Acevero told The Sun that Democrats 'weren't particularly fond of' him because, prior to his election in 2018, he was an activist with a penchant for holding politicians in both parties accountable. 'I wasn't the darling of the establishment, and I certainly wasn't embraced by the establishment Democrats in District 39,' he said. 'I unseated a two-term incumbent, and I ran on a working-class, progressive agenda that some folks tried to weaponize … using the whole 'Red Scare Socialism' scare tactic.' Acevero alleges establishment figures later hand-picked a candidate to beat him in the 2022 primary, calling his policies 'pie in the sky' or 'radical.' Still, he won. Though he's rounding out his second term, Acevero still isn't necessarily 'embraced' by other Democrats in the General Assembly. Often when he participates in floor debates, he is jeered and his comments — occasionally incendiary — are often called into question. In 2021, he offered amendments to a package of major police reform bills because he felt the settled policy didn't go far enough. Acevero voted against the Democratic redistricting plan later that year because he says he doesn't believe in gerrymandering. He's publicly critical of criminal justice bills that establish mandatory minimum sentences, of which he said: 'Time and again, civil rights organizations have pointed out … it ties judges' hands, but it also disproportionately impacts, you know, Black and Latino people.' 'I've been very unapologetic about the policies that I advocate for and who I am, because I think it's important,' he said, adding that efforts to 'delegitimize Democratic Socialists and their policies [have] never worked.' -----------------
Yahoo
31 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The £70bn pension tax raid Reeves may not be able to resist
Rachel Reeves is eyeing up your pension. The Chancellor is struggling to balance the books, so where better to look than Gordon Brown's favourite cash cow? It is becoming increasingly likely that she will have to follow in the footsteps of the chancellor whose framed photo she kept as a student, by launching a raid on retirement pots this autumn. As Torsten Bell, the pensions minister, highlighted conspicuously last week, the Government offers tax relief worth £70bn every year to encourage workers to save. While he insisted that incentives to save were 'a good thing', Bell refused to rule out a raid in the future. But while pensions might be a tempting target, the risk of unintended consequences is high. By taking a slice of pension savings, Reeves could inadvertently discourage people from stashing money away or lead to lower pay for the very people that Labour promises to protect. Roughly £12.8bn of individual contributions were made to personal pensions in 2022-23. Data published by the taxman show that in 2022–23, the Government gave up £46.8bn it would have collected if pension contributions had been subject to income tax. That is in addition to £24bn it would have raised if employer pension contributions had been subject to National Insurance (NI) contributions. Another telling statement by Bell this week was that the Government wanted to ensure that people are not 'taxed twice' on the money they save for retirement. He said: 'What does the pension tax system do? It makes it easy for people to smooth their incomes over their lifetime. We're not taxing you twice. That is an important feature of most tax systems, and it will remain an important feature.' But that statement still leaves some low-hanging fruit for the Chancellor to pluck. The first is salary sacrifice, where staff agree to forego a portion of their salary in return for the same amount being ploughed into a workplace pension. As a result, employees can reduce their NI contributions and benefit from tax relief on the money they add to their pension. Employers, who already don't pay NI on an employee's pension contributions, can also reduce their tax bill further because the sacrifice serves as a pay cut. Pensioners do not pay NI, leaving scope for the Government to start taxing one side of this equation and still abide by this principle. HMRC estimates that it lost out on £3.9bn in NI receipts because of salary sacrifice schemes, which would be a princely sum for a cash-strapped Chancellor. In addition, employees currently benefit from roughly £6bn a year in income tax relief through salary sacrifice. 'A generous and opaque subsidy' The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has urged the Government to go further by moving towards levying NI on employer pension contributions as a principle. Carl Emmerson, the deputy director of the IFS, describes the absence of NI on employer pension contributions as 'a very generous and very opaque subsidy' that if removed entirely, could boost the Treasury's coffers by more than £17bn a year. However, with businesses still reeling from a £25bn NI raid on employers, this would be a politically toxic move, and one that Emmerson says will have consequences for working people. 'It would almost certainly put downward pressure on pay, and would also make government spending less generous because lots of public sector workers get generous employer pension contributions, and those public sector employers would find their national insurance bills going up,' he says. To ease pressures, Reeves could choose to reimburse public sector employers as she did during last autumn's raid. The Resolution Foundation has estimated that doing so would cost £5bn – though the measure would still raise £12bn. A more radical option would be to restrict the income tax relief that applies when a worker makes pension contributions at a flat rate of 30pc. This would benefit those on modest income, but at the expense of higher earners. Economists estimate the measure would affect up to 6m higher and additional rate taxpayers, costing the wealthiest savers about £2,600. HMRC estimates show that 37pc of income tax relief on total contributions is provided at the basic rate, just over half at the higher rate and 7pc at the top 45p rate. However, Sir Steve Webb, a former pensions minister, says the Treasury has shied away from this reform because of its hideous complexity, as well as the significant impact it would have on public sector workers and the implications for their gold-plated, final-salary pensions. Sir Steve says: 'The challenge for the Government with potential cuts to pension tax relief is that a significant part of the existing tax break goes to long-serving and senior public servants, typically in defined-benefit pension arrangements.' Any cut to higher rate relief or tax-free lump sums would affect many such workers adversely at a time when the Government already has issues with the public sector workforce over pay. As this group is part of Labour's core voting base, it is likely to be wary of alienating them further. 'Constant meddling' Baroness Altmann, another former pensions minister, warns that changes to pensions, including Reeves's decision to bring pension pots into the scope of inheritance tax, could leave many people without the means to support themselves later in retirement. 'The constant tax meddling has been a disaster for pensions,' she says. Altmann warns that private sector employees are likely to be left footing the bill for any further changes. 'We're already subsidising hugely generous public sector pensions that the private sector can almost never dream of,' she says. There is also another element of the pensions system that is currently tax-free on the way in and out: the amount that can be taken from pension pots. Tax-free lump sum Currently, people can take up to 25pc of any pension as a tax-free lump sum when they reach 55, up to a maximum of £286,275. Reducing the amount to £100,000 would affect about one in five retirees, and raise £2bn in the long run, according to the IFS. A similar proposal is being pushed by the Labour-affiliated Fabian Society, and it is understood that Treasury officials have urged previous chancellors to look at the relief, which costs about £5.5bn a year. Emmerson says: 'If you've already got £900,000 in your pension pot, it's not obvious why the taxpayer should be subsidising you to put more in your pension. These people can't really claim that they're under-saving for retirement.' However, he makes a more obvious point that should make Reeves think twice if she wants to raid workplace pension savings. 'This would almost exclusively be paid by workers,' he says. A Treasury spokesman said they were 'committed to keeping taxes for working people as low as possible'. However, it's now clear that they're going to go up. The question is by how much. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
'Migrant hotel': Epping council unanimously urge Government to close hotel
IN a vote yesterday, Epping council has unanimously passed a motion to urge the Government 'to immediately and permanently close" a "migrant hotel" in the Essex town. The motion follows protests outside the Bell Hotel in Epping believed to house asylum seekers, which has become the centre of national attention after demonstrations which began peacefully last week escalated into violence; with police officers injured and a total of 18 people arrested. During the meeting Conservative councillor Shane Yerrell read a message from the father of a 14-year-old girl after an asylum seeker was charged with allegedly attempting to kiss her, which said: "I just want the hotel to be moved". Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, 38, denied charges of sexual assault at Chelmsford Magistrates' court earlier this month. In the message read to the meeting by Councillor Shane Yerrell said: 'I do not want or condone any of the violence that has taken place at the protests – that's not what we're about, and that's not what we're trying to achieve – it's only going to make things go the other way. 'I just want the hotel to be moved, not only off our streets, but away from making any other family feel how we are feeling right now.' In a sometimes confrontational meeting, speakers criticised the disorder that has erupted at some of the gatherings, and the reported attendance of members of the far right. Read more Dad-of-two from Essex made a millionaire after winning huge EuroMillions prize Look inside historic Leigh venue fully re-opened and already booked out for Saturday Long-awaited plans to build 966 new homes at Fossetts Farm unveiled 'Inspiration': Southend school pride in former student who put England in final Seven people have now been charged in relation to protests outside the hotel, while another protest yesterday saw Essex Police thank those demonstrators for protesting peacefully. Jon Whitehouse, Epping Liberal Democrat leader said the people of Epping 'can fight their own battles and want their Thursdays and Sundays back'. He said: 'I'm appalled it's been necessary for the police to arrive in Epping in such volume and such force because of the violence and the intimidation that we've experienced here. 'Facilitating passionate, lawful protest is a difficult and an important task – it's made more difficult when those with no interest in the community of Epping choose to exploit those concerns, exploit the victims of crime and awful experiences for their own warped ends. 'If you're here to stir up violence and confrontation in the surge of warped ideology – or maybe for some social media clicks – we don't want you and we don't need you.'
