First Word

Take heart

Challenging the Econocrats – those  people who use mainstream economic thinking to define political debate –  is not for the faint-hearted.  Their failure to even envisage the possibility of the

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Out of the way

So what has happened since we published our last issue in December 2020 on the power of the patriarchy?  For a start, we are out of the pandemic, these issues

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Growth misgivings

It is taken as a given that unless political parties of whatever stripe promise growth, they are dead in the water.  Even within the green movement, anyone seeking to influence

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Small print writ large

Welcome to our 25th issue which is quite a milestone for us.  Given that our mission is to open up thinking on economics it’s probably no surprise that our theme

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More or less equal?

My first real consciousness of the super-rich happened as a teenager while working over the summer for my black-sheep uncle, a 1960s hippy turned Parisian artisan woodworker for the rich.

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Whose news?

So COP27 is in November.  Last year the build-up seemed huge for the last international climate conference in Glasgow, COP26.  This time; not so much.   But is that my UK

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The 70s? Not again.

If you remember the 70s then you weren’t there. That was the oft-cited summary of the time as shrouded in a narcotic haze. I, however, do remember the 70s quite

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Ground control

Control of land has been a key driver of wealth, power and conflict for most of human history.  The industrial revolution changed all that as power shifted from landowners to

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Enlightenment goes viral

I am not a believer in conspiracy theories, but for one moment let’s imagine there exists a shadowy secret society bent on world betterment… The Society had been increasingly worried.

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What is corruption?

After all, it’s hard to bite the hand that feeds you. As a teenager, I recall my father informing me that to make real money you need to be close

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Rein in men

  Women’s reality is often invisible in economic analysis and that’s not hard to see. And the lack of women in economics too is clear, even outside the mainstream. The

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In black and white

I benefit from multiple privileges. White? Tick. Male? Tick. Posh? Tick and so on. In fact the world is largely designed by people like me for people like me. My

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Accentuate the positive

It all started with hope. Now we have viral infection. But there is still hope. I came up with “hope” as the theme for this issue in the autumn. I was

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Chasing tales

Calls for a more circular economy – otherwise known as “closing the loop” – are now commonplace. We have got recycling, we try to reduce waste, and plastic packaging is

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Global calories

The food on your plate, and how it got there, is the theme for our tenth issue. Food has been an area of conflict at least since the sugar boycotts

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The bull in China’s shop

In this issue we are exploring the world of international organisations, values and globalisation. This is at a time when Trump is challenging all the norms, but maybe the norms

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Collaboratively yours

The theme of this issue is common resource management. This may seem a niche interest but when you think about it there are many resources we have to manage together.

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What do you do?

Whether it’s the Duke of Edinburgh or the bride’s mum asking it, not everyone finds the “what do you do” question a comfortable one. It suggests that we are expected

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Time to Pay Peter

It is 30 years since the Brundtland Commission published its report on Sustainable Development. This was the official response to the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth work that created

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When will they ever learn?

Can we avoid financial instability or has our human nature evolved in such a way that they are inevitable? Clearly Gordon Brown’s endless pronounce- ments of the end of ‘Boom

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