Plan B vs. Plan C
Or Why I didn’t be attending the launch-Conference for Compass’s ‘Plan B’ event, this weekend. By Rupert Read I got an invite from Gavin Hayes and Neal Lawson to attend the launch-Conference this Saturday for Compass’s ‘Plan B’. Now, I’m a big fan of Compass. It has been for some time the only real sign [...]
Anti anti-growth and the fallacy of economics
As our current economic model continues to drive us relentlessly towards the precipice of cataclysmic environmental destruction. While simultaneously forcing us to contemplate a ‘lost decade’ of stagnate high unemployment, reduction in the social wage and mass poverty. People are increasingly questioning the logic of a system based upon growth and the boom and bust [...]
Greens and growth
Greens don’t like growth. It’s the mantra. We like to talk about a ‘stable’ economy; one that neither grows nor shrinks. The trouble with maintaining a zero growth economy is that you have to maintain zero population growth alongside it. Have zero economic growth and twenty percent population growth and it means you have the [...]
Being Human – and refusing ecocide
Where are the proposals, the routemaps, to help us disentangle ourselves from the ecocidal economic growth machine we have been convinced we are wedded to? There are clearly many such routemaps, but most crucially what is needed is to identify how such a routemap can work both within the electoral system as it stands (within [...]
Plaid’s new independence report
Plaid Cymru have today launched what they are reporting as ‘proof’ that Wales would not flounder under independence, but would soar. My sympathies for an independent Wales are a bit unclear, as within the EU it seems to be that the only ‘benefits’ of sovereign statehood against autonomy within a federal UK would be the [...]
New unemployment figures: good news?
Just a quick post on the latest ONS labour market figures here. The figures on unemployment are being reported as broadly, but not excessively, good news for the government. The headline rate of unemployment is down, marginally, to 7.7%. That’s certainly moving in the right direction, but as a change of just .1% quarter on [...]
GDP figures – what’s Osborne’s plan?
First, let’s teach some journalists a little basic maths. 100 – 0.5% of 100 = 100 – 0.5. That’s 99.5. 0.5% of 99.5 is 0.4975. 99.5 + 0.4975 = 99.975. To put it another way, if GDP shrinks by 0.5%, and then grows by 0.5%, then it is lower than it was at the [...]
Philippe Legrain at the Edinburgh Book Festival
A vision of a world fairer, safer, richer and greener. Thomas Friedman says the world is flat – Philippe Legrain doesn’t think so. What matters most to how you do in life is where you are born and who your parents are. Philippe’s envisioned world is one where the benefits and opportunities of the middle [...]