Two prospective building sites in London are, I think, totemic of our current economic climate. The Heygate Estate and the Broadgate Estate, though very different, show two sides of the same coin. The Heygate Estate in Elephant and Castle, South East London, was completed just over 30 years ago. Now, however, it has been completely [...]
This is a guest post by Samuel Wilson. As you may have heard, the government is planning to bring a ‘Military Covenant’ into law. This would give soldiers and their families particular rights and privileges – including (quoting from the Guardian, 16th May) ‘priority NHS treatment for forces personnel and their families; council tax rebates [...]
Your starter for 10: Which voice of Britain’s embattled public sector workers said this yesterday? We acknowledge that some cuts are necessary due to the parlous state of the country’s finances, but we feel greatly let down that we are not considered to be a protected priority area by the government. They have and will [...]
“There is nothing necessarily dignified about manual labour at all, and most of it is absolutely degrading…To sweep a slushy crossing for eight hours on a day when the east wind is blowing is a disgusting occupation. To sweep it with mental, moral, or physical dignity seems to me to be impossible. To sweep it [...]
The International Monetary Fund has released a paper entitled Inequality, Leverage and Crisis making the case that inequality was an ‘underlying cause of the Great Recession of 2008-2009′, The Telegraph reports: “Global unemployment remains at record highs, with widening income inequality adding to social strains,” he [IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn] said, citing turmoil in North Africa as [...]
LibCon today has a link to a poll commissioned by the FT showing that around 60% of those questioned agreed that it was wrong for companies in the UK to avoid tax, despite its legality, while only 15% disagreed. This, as the FT points out, is good news for UKUncut and their anti-tax avoidance campaign [...]
Since the birth of the Republic, Ireland has been dominated by two centre right parties. Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, and there antecedents, have rarely gained less than 75% of the vote between them . Yet an historic shift is set to take when Ireland goes to the polls in a month’s time. According to [...]
Alan Johnson announced he’s resigning as Shadow Chancellor for family reasons. Reading between the lines, could it be because he knows nothing about economics, frequently clashes with Ed Miliband and is just a little bit shit? Let’s hope Ed picks someone a bit more suited to the role next time, who’ll really go for the [...]
“There’s always a bigger fish.” – Qui-Gon Jinn Paul Krugman on his New York Times blog notes a symptom of just how far the West has regressed in the distribution of income: so much of America’s wealth is concentrated in the top 1% of the income scale that those only just below actually feel insecure about [...]
As you will know, Iain Duncan Smith recently revealed plans to force the unemployed to clean the streets for no more than their £65 per week in benefits. In response, the Guardian’s Jackie Ashley told us that labour was correct not to “howl with outrage” at the snowman-impersonating minister’s plans. Though she questioned some of [...]
