When I was a child in Madagascar, we used to walk through a little village on the way to school. There was a man in a wheelchair who used to sit out by the roadside, his legs shrivelled and twisted under him, stick-thin and useless. Polio, my mum told us – a terrible disease that [...]
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The EU is subsidising illegal fishing
That’s the straight-forward message of this latest campaign video from Greenpeace, which highlights the fact that EU subsidy monies have found their way to fishing companies with a history of illegal activity. In one incidence, a Spanish company received €15 million between 20o2 and 2009, despite several of their crews being convicted for fishing without [...]
The tax haven secrets of the FTSE 100
Did you think BP was a British oil company? There’s a good reason why they’re just called ‘BP’ now, and are only formerly known as British Petroleum – there’s not much British left about the company. BP is a global conglomerate of 1,568 subsidiary companies. Of those, 276 of them are registered on the British [...]
Sharing is common cents
I didn’t get to take part in Free Money Day, (I’ve been in a hamlet in west Wales for the last week, population 3) but it looks like it started some great conversations. Over 60 different events in 17 different countries, and lots of buzz, even if it turns out that getting strangers to accept [...]
Time for a dictator debt audit
Is it fair that countries still have to pay the debts taken on by dictators, even once the dictator is gone? Surely not, if the borrowed money was wasted, squirreled away into offshore bank accounts or squandered on ego projects or weaponry. But it seems it’s easier to shift the dictators themselves than get rid [...]
Stop arming the world
The world’s biggest arms fair starts today. Care to guess where it is and who is among the sponsors? Correct – it’s London and the British government is a key partner. It’s the DSEi arms fair, in association with the aforementioned UK Trade and Investment’s Defence and Security Organisation. If you object to your tax [...]
Take part in Free Money Day
How would you feel standing in the street, giving away your own money to passing strangers? Odd? Embarrassed? Generous? Liberated? There’s just a week to go before Free Money Day, a social experiment in sharing. On the 15th of September participants will do just that, giving away money a couple of coins at a time [...]
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 [...]
Can you help Make Lunch?
A few weeks ago the BBC screened a documentary called Poor Kids, about children growing up in poverty in the UK. It profiles the lives of several children, letting them tell their own stories to camera. It’s an eye opening programme, showing the realities of a childhood without heating in winter, without holidays, and where [...]
Three steps forward
I write about a lot of big causes on this site, so it’s nice to see a few of them making progress. There are three breakthroughs to celebrate this week: 1) The European Union is due to suggest changes to the Common Fisheries Policy today, making a new set of recommendations that could see an [...]
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