I was on the Jeremy Vine show today on Radio 2 to talk about post growth economics. The production team had come across my article on Japan, and got me in to talk about whether growth is actually necessary in an economy. On the other side of the table, Sam Bowman from the Adam Smith [...]
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Immigration: choose your headline
It’s been a bizarre week for immigration headlines. ‘Immigration does not cause unemployment‘ declared the Independent on the front page. ‘Immigrants are not causing unemployment‘ said the Telegraph, and the Guardian announced that ‘Migrants do not affect jobless levels‘. Meanwhile the Mirror has reported that ‘Every four non-EU immigrants puts a Brit out of work‘, [...]
Chinese whispers and climate skeptics
Last week saw a rather bizarre spate of news stories about the weather, and particularly about Britain facing a new ice age. Needless to say the claim was gleefully repeated by the climate “skeptic” blogs, and it provides a rather interesting case study in internet noise. Here’s a sample skeptic headline: British mainstream news media [...]
Good news or bad news?
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been struck by a series of good news stories that have accidentally been reported as bad news stories. Here they are: Fewer new cars were registered on Britain’s roads this year. The supermarket chain Tesco has posted its lowest growth figures for 20 years. The British arms company [...]
Positive News
Just a quick shout out to Positive News, which for some reason I hadn’t come across until very recently. It’s a quarterly newspaper “dedicated to promoting environmental sustainability, peace, social justice and equality, cultural diversity, political co-operation, individual fulfilment, and community empowerment.” The title of the paper reflects a desire to focus on solutions, which [...]
Remembering what matters
I closed yesterday’s post with a series of questions about what matters, about what kind of a world we are creating and who we are serving. I was interested to read a similar from George Monbiot today. This is from the new introduction to his personal website: While my opinions about particular issues have changed [...]
The E F Schumacher legacy
Catch it while you can – there’s a great radio piece up on the BBC’s website, exploring E F Schumacher’ ideas. In particular, the programme investigates the influence of his thought on David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ idea, but it ranges across the limits to growth, materialism and wellbeing. Family and friends contribute, and so do [...]
The delicate art of making predictions
There’s been a bit of a debate over population predictions on last week’s review of Peoplequake. Among the bones of contention are the UN population estimates, and a 2005 UNEP report on environmental refugees, currently the subject of much skeptic tub-thumping. Making predictions is a tricky business, but it’s also a natural and necessary process. [...]
Get the jump on the churnalists
When I was a journalism student, I was taught how to write and investigate and check sources, how to structure a story and present information as dispassionately as possible. I was also let into a little secret. There was a rather enlightening moment when I first started getting current press releases, writing articles, and then seeing [...]
We need a bigger cake!
Imagine you’re having dinner with four friends, and your host serves up a cake. Great. Everyone loves cake. When it is cut up into five slices however, it looks like this. Did I say five slices? You need to look closer – the smallest slice is at the top there, between the green one and [...]
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