The 1.5 million households in Britain facing destitution and the 10 million simply in poverty will have wept at the emptiness of the government’s Queen’s Speech programme. There’s to be no emergency Budget to pay the...
Blog
Alan SimpsonThe Economics of Sleaze
If Conservative MPs can spare a moment from watching porn in the House of Commons chamber they will find lots more ‘hot stuff’ calling for their attention in the world outside. A vast swathe of South East Asia faces the...
Meltdown – Confronting the delusions of our time
In these scary times it is hard to think much beyond the tragedy that is Ukraine. Bombed hospitals sit badly in anyone’s books. Flood tides of refugees shame us all. But if any good is to be salvaged it must come from a...
‘Do Look Up’: a time to change everything
2022 is not going to be the year I turn into a film critic. But if you haven’t seen the film ‘Don’t Look Up’, do so now. This isn’t just because the film offers a terrific satire on the conflicting political influences...
Democracy: the Writing on the Road
Forget the shenanigans about Tory Party partying, something far more insidious it taking place; something eating away at the foundations of British democracy. Socialised distraction is just a cover for doing so. As...
COP26 and ‘The Great Law of Peace’
Don’t blame them; the sherpas, the civil servants and Ministers. They did their best, struggling to get commitments (rather than conditional brackets) out of COP26 negotiations. Surviving on caffeine and little sleep...
Living in the Overshoot
“Don’t choose extinction”. This was the simple advice offered by a dinosaur in the UN’s CGI video message to global leaders. The question is whether any have the sense to heed it. The chaotic upheavals surrounding...
Keystone COPout
Sometimes there are events that make you rail in anger. Others make you weep. Reading the government’s plethora of ‘net zero’ policy papers ahead of November’s COP26 climate conference, I could barely hold back the...
Men (and Women) in Dark Times
In her book Men in Dark Times, the philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the notion of inner emigration. What was it that stood in the way of so many prominent/influential people challenging the rise of Hitlerism or...
Are local authorities equipped to reach net zero?
Are local authorities equipped to reach net zero? “Only rapid and drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in this decade can prevent climate breakdown” – Sir Patrick Vallance, Chief Scientific Advisor. This...
