Dead Aid is a much talked about book that has taken me a little while to get round to. It’s got a lot of attention because while there are many books that critique development aid, none have come out quite as aggressively and entirely against it. Furthermore, Dambisa Moyo is a woman, and an African, [...]
Archive | August, 2011
Blessed are the peacemakers
Britain’s arms sales to the Middle East are up 27% on last year, according to an investigation by The Times this week. The increased security risk of the ‘Arab spring’, and perhaps David Cameron’s arms sales tour earlier this year, are paying dividends to our various arms companies. Despite government promises to clamp down on [...]
The insolvent phantom of today
In January 1961, president Eisenhower made his farewell address to the nation. The speech is famous for warning the US about the “military-industrial complex” that had taken shape since the Second World War, and that an economic and political landscape overshadowed by defense would be bad for democracy and bad for peace. But it was [...]
What we learned this week
If you had to choose ten essential books as a ‘life canon’ for living well in the 21st century, what would they be? What boy doesn’t like secret tunnels and bunkers? I’ve head tantalising rumours of old tunnels and air raid shelters under High Town in Luton, but I bet they’ve got nothing on these [...]
Can we save Abbotswood Park?
A bit of local news for a change… If you spend a lot of your time immersed in global issues, it helps to be able to do a bit of really local campaigning to keep things in balance. In my case, it’s Transition Luton and my local resident’s association, which is currently leading a campaign [...]
Hell and High Water, by Alastair McIntosh
A couple of years ago I heard Alastair McIntosh speak about his new book, Hell and High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition. He was one of the most compelling speakers I’d heard in a long time, and I bought all his books at the end of the talk – except the one [...]
The climate change policy tracker
Here’s a neat online tool from Britain’s largest business lobbying group, the Confederation of British Industry. CBI has called for the government to take climate change seriously, and has developed the Climate Change Policy Tracker to illustrate progress in a snapshot view. The tracker is divided into four categories: Power, transport, industry, and buildings. For [...]
ColaLife: a simple idea can go a long way
A few years ago in what seems like another life, I was in Zanzibar on holiday. We rented a van and drove out to see some caves or something, and stumbled upon a remote little cove miles from anywhere. We were rather pleased with ourselves for finding such a secluded and idyllic spot, but we [...]
Beyond left and right: new categories please
In the papers today, another round of political rhetoric about our broken society and how it needs to be fixed. Tony Blair has weighed in on the riots, attempting to broker a third way between those who say it’s a crisis of morals and those who see a crisis of inequality. To me, and most [...]
What we learned this week
This week marks 40 years since the end of the gold-standard dollar and with it the Bretton Woods system. Here’s Gerald Epstein on what in meant at the time, essentially a US default by another name. And here’s Larry Elliot on why it still matters today. Vinay Gupta has a hard hitting essay/rant on the [...]
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