In 1972 the law was passed that allowed the UK to join what was then called the European Economic Community (EEC). Despite Europe’s current crises, it’s unchanging, fundamental challenge was expressed that year by Sicco Mansholt, then president of the European...
Being poor is an expensive lifestyle. When you can’t afford things most people take for granted you have to find unusual, costly ways around. So, if you don’t have a washing machine you have to use a Laundromat – this costs about a tenner for one load to be washed and...
Fancy going to Accident and Emergency with conjunctivitis. I mean, what kind of feckless, ignorant type would do that? That was the sort of attitude I felt from the handful of medical staff I encountered there early on Saturday morning. It wasn't even bad...
It was nine o'clock in the morning on the second day of Universal Credit running in my borough. After some confusion at the main desk I was directed to the room now designated as Universal Credit area. It was surreal: fresh paint, brand-coloured balloons, everyone...
Dear Jane Ellison MP, When I travel from your constituency where I live to visit family members outside London, I pass through Liverpool Street station. Perched near the steps that bring you up from the Underground is a statue so modest that most commuters pass it...
Meet our heroine – talented, lively, hard working, striving and ambitious. A Londoner. With a deal of bad luck in her life but also acts of kindness and support, for instance a lot of random but interesting internships. A desire to do well and to change the world for...
I am just back from Japan, where I concentrated on eating as much rice and sushi as I could. It was a fabulous trip and I learned a great deal, and perhaps the most important lesson I learned is about Japanese growth. Put simply, there isn't any but it doesn't appear...
Nuclear plans pass high costs, economic and other risks to future generations, it's time for new design criteria for the energy system. Cancelling the troubled plan for the French state-owned energy company EDF to build the proposed new Hinkley Point C nuclear plants...
Trisha Greenhalgh and other health writers developed the idea of narrative-based medicine to explain the importance of what patients tell doctors that can't, or doesn't, tend to get included in data. In fact, the idea of stories as a policy-making tool has developed...
New Weather has published a book including eight important narratives to explain the next local economic revolution. Instead of waiting for economic salvation by outside investors or Whitehall grants, local people are beginning to innovate themselves. The trouble is,...