It is one of the great ironies of history that, east and west, the liberation of the agricultural slaves and serfs happened almost at the same time. The people who carried out most of the work in the fields of Russia and eastern Europe and the plantations of the...
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‘Das Kapital’ in 60 mins: Sarah Woods’ new BBC Radio play
New Weather's Sarah Woods adapts Das Kapital for BBC Radio 4, broadcast on the bicentenary of Karl Marx's birth... LISTEN HERE: Das Kapital, the drama, until 4th June on BBC Radio i-player Marx's Das Kapital is one of the most influential books of the modern world. It...
Running to stand still in the North Sea clean-up
One of the peculiar implications of our obsession with oil and fossil fuels is the strange way the UK has decided to pay for the decommissioning of the vast swathes of concrete and steel that now litters the North Sea. READ THE NEW REPORT HERE: Rigged: how the UK oil...
Banking on denial: the investment rush to climate catastrophe
Ripping-up his bank account as he writes, Bill McGuire says that banks are still pouring money into 'extreme fossil fuels' in the face of common sense, and what they already know about global warming, wrecking the climate for everyone, themselves included... It hasn't...
‘Deconomisation’: the growing conversation on economics reformation
Economics associations from Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic stage the first international conference on the 33 Theses 'Deconomisation' - definition - noun: undoing the hold over society of a single, dominant economic approach It was 29 years since I...
The economics of gobbling
Shouting ‘look over there’ while getting on with something nefarious over here is a tried and true tactic. So as the genuine scandal of the appalling Cambridge Analytica unfolds, it’s worth looking at what else is happening. Which brings us to Melrose. This company is...
Latest Publication
This pamphlet looks at how the UK is unprepared for a new era of crises and disasters. To illuminate the national predicament we look at lessons from recent history, and what we can learn, often from countries in the Global South, about the kind of local planning required and resources needed to be ready for when storms and other disasters strike near where we live.