It is interesting that recent developments indicate that Parliament is supreme. Little intricacies like calling the government into contempt as a result of its actions prove that Parliament is indeed the highest court in the land. I fear this is indicative that – up till now most MPs, just as they seem not to know… Read more
Category:
Society
A right to Food
According to the Department of Health, in 2015 there were 184,528 hospital bed days taken by patients who were suffering from malnutrition from lack of food” Is There A Right To Food? How To Solve The UK’s Growing Food Poverty Crisis. According to the Malnutrition TaskForce, the cost of malnutrition to the health and care… Read more
The most powerful couple in British politics – who you’ve never heard of
I’m usually in favour of cock-up rather than conspiracy but I’ve discovered that there is a power couple in British politics of whom few of us have heard. They have never been elected, but they are all too highly effective lobbyists. Matthew Elliott is fairly well-known as the founder of the TaxPayers’ Alliance and the… Read more
Charity begins with government
I’d like to start with a peon of praise as to how the Hospice de Beaune has raised as much as £12million for charity this year. I notice two things since I last attended – an embarrassingly long time ago: The auction is now run by Christies. So the auction is now properly international and as… Read more
The Precariat and Basic Income?
Professor Guy Standing – he of ‘Precariat’ fame – has written a long article suggesting that in fact the Precariat class may give hope for change. They are the “dangerous class”. It is a “dangerous class” partly of course to itself – suicide, self harm and drug taking are, unsurprisingly, prevalent. Also a section of… Read more
Universal Basic Income is Basic Security
Professor Daniel Nettle of Newcastle University has a really excellent article on a Universal Basic Income (UBI) here. In it he outlines in original and coherent fashion just how good UBI would be from the outset, when I had reluctantly concluded – till now – that we might only get there via starting off with… Read more
Positive Money and Monetary Progress
I’ve been having some encouraging converstions with Positive Money (PoMo) members. First, let me be clear, I use MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) in the sense that the Theory is the Job Guarantee and the Modern Monetary bit is a statement of fact. This is the view that Prof. Bill Mitchell himself takes, having in fact,… Read more
Why we shouldn’t tolerate Palm Oil
Iceland is the only grocer to have removed Palm Oil entirely from their own label products and they’ve managed it in less than a year. Not unreasonably they wanted to shout about this, but their Christmas advert has been banned for being ‘too political’. After all, there have been worries about private equity and other… Read more
Brexit Tribes in 13 Ranked Questions
A recent article by Pagel and Cooper: People’s Vote analysis: 40% of the public up for grabs by either side is very interesting in that it groups voters by the ordering of the questions on Table 1. The article then groups voters into 8 categories as shown in Fig. 1. Grouping or clustering is… Read more
Amazon Fresh thinking?
This week’s ‘Sunday Times’ business carried an article suggesting that Amazon are still anxious to improve their presence in the UK grocery market. ‘Retail Insider’ reckons: The UK and especially Tesco will also represent the real challenge for Amazon Fresh, if it wants to become internationally accepted. If Amazon can really challenge Tesco in its… Read more