This was a good Zoom meeting: ‘The Austerity Doctrine in the Time of Coronavirus’ here (about an hour), with Yanis Varousakis, Naomi Klein, Brian Eno and Stephanie Kelton, which is quite a line-up. For me Yanis Varousakis was the most on the ball in his assertion that the ‘nightmare of the powerful is that the… Read more
Category:
Society
Not a bad philosophical start
I agree with this post and with these 2 minutes from twitter: (For info -the Baroness of Yardley was the previous Labour Education Secretary, Estelle Morris.) Jess Phillips is often criticised for her lack of philosophy, and a Tory-like failure of systematic reasoning. This is her at her best – emotional engagement with people’s needs…. Read more
Rural buses
While we are in the area of bus travel some may remember that a few weeks ago I mentioned a report by the Council for the Preservation of Rural England (CPRE) on local bus travel “Every village every hour”. As local elections are coming up the CPRE now have a website with a template email… Read more
Transport leasing with a purpose…
I thought this was interesting that Newport Bus, one of the UK’s few remaining municipally owned bus companies, are adding to their number of electric buses. Now I have to admit I was a touch cynical when I read that the batteries themselves were leased, but: Thanks to the arrangement that Newport Bus has with… Read more
‘Better things aren’t possible’
I enjoyed this – old as it is, which I’ve just encountered: It set me thinking that really the journey to understand money is also a journey to show that better things are possible and especially with today’s narrow thinking, also affordable, when ‘affordability’ is so often used to shut down further discussion. Understanding money… Read more
Spectator goes anti-austerity and full MMT
There is an article from this week’s Spectator by Malcolm Offord,who is the founder and chairman of Badenoch & Co (an investment company). He is standing on the Lothian list for the Conservative Party in May’s Scottish Parliament election. The article also appears under the right-wing think tank, Policy Exchange banner, where the title ‘Why… Read more
Blandness doesn’t work and lobbying shouldn’t
I rather think that in our current circumstances, Parliament being recalled to recite peons of praise for the late Prince Philip will not show it in its best light. Meanwhile even radio 4’s Westminster Hour mentioned how appropriate in our actual political mess, this sentence was – from the latest episode of ‘Line of Duty’:… Read more
Racing to the bottom…
This from journalist, Ash Sarkar on the recent ‘race’ report, I thought was worth watching: I thought a particularly good point was her conclusion on identity politics. She points out that there is never, ever any resolution in identity politics because we are who we are and cannot actually change it. That is a big… Read more
‘Flagism’
I stumbled across this on twitter which I thought an excellent indication of where our government currently sits: This is the vacuousness of identity politics demonstrated, oh so delightfully……. Read more
Macron thinks, Johnson doesn’t
According to the FT – and amazingly to me: President Emmanuel Macron is moving ahead with a plan to close [the] Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA). Macron himself was a previous student of that same ENA, which was started by De Gaulle in 1945. It is in effect a post graduate school for administrators and many… Read more