There are all kinds of things in Schumacher’s writings that are ripe for rediscovery. Here are just two that caught my eye in my recent re-readings as being particularly relevant: The energy connection As a young man, Schumacher studied the problems of his country’s reconstruction efforts after the First World War. Germany’s coal production was [...]
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Has Britain experienced ‘peak stuff’?
Environmental writer and analyst Chris Goodall discovered something rather intriguing recently – that the amount of stuff Britain uses peaked in around 2001-2003 and has gone into decline. Shortly after the millennium, we started using fewer material resources to run the economy – oil, water, paper, fertiliser, cement – you name it, chances are we’re [...]
The network that runs the world
If you could map the connections between the world’s most powerful corporations, you could work out which ones were the most important, and which ones were critical to the functioning of the whole – the infamous ‘too big to fail’ companies. That’s what three systems analysts from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have done, [...]
Where are the world’s safest banks?
Since every country regulates its banking in its own way, financial stability varies immensely from country to country. Some places value stability more than growth, and ask more of their banks. Others relax regulation in order to encourage the financial sector, which delivers growth at the risk of increased instability, bailouts and banking collapses. Comparing [...]
Fire your bank on November 5th
In Britain, the 5th of November is Guy Fawkes Night, which commemorates the failure of a plot to blow up the House of Parliament in 1605. It’s traditionally celebrated with fireworks, bonfires, and the burning in effigy of the aforementioned and rather unfortunate Mr Fawkes. Fawke’s other legacy is the Guy Fawke’s Mask, as drawn [...]
Why the City of London needs to be occupied
There’s been a lot in the news this week about the Occupy London protest around St Paul’s. The Cathedral has closed for the first time since the Second World War, and there is talk of legal action to move the protestors on. There is talk of health and safety, highway regulations, and the definitions of [...]
Reducing the negative impact of advertising
In yesterday’s post, I looked at a recent report that analyses the role of advertising in shaping cultural values. It concludes that advertising is something of a negative force, and that “the potential impacts of advertising should be of pressing concern to a wide range of third sector organisations—irrespective of whether they are working on [...]
The cultural impact of advertising
For the last few weeks I’ve been carrying around a report entitled The Advertising Effect, from the Compass think tank. I’ve been meaning to write about it and haven’t got round to it. I’ve been reminded of it this week the publication of a new report from WWF and the Public Interest Research Centre, Think [...]
The myth of the free market
This week I’ve been reading Ha-Joon Chang’s book 23 Things they don’t tell you about Capitalism. I’ll review it when I’m done, but I thought I’d share his insight from chapter one: “There is no such thing as a free market”. Popular economic wisdom suggests that markets should be free and interfered with as little [...]
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 [...]
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