I came across Change the Rules this week, a campaigning network looking at the causes of inequality. If you’re a regular reader of blogs like this one, the facts in this video won’t be new to you, but they’re well presented. At their extremes, the inequalities of global wealth are eye watering. As always, some […]
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Enough food for everyone, if…
This week sees the launch of ‘If‘, a big new campaign on hunger. It’s going to be one of the big campaigns of the year, as a couple of hundred organisations are involved. It will target the G8 meeting in Britain later this year to try and raise the simple point that there is enough […]
The puzzle of free school breakfasts
This week Blackpool became the first local authority in Britain to start serving free breakfasts to all primary school children. It follows a similar scheme in London, with teachers calling for more areas to take up the practice. I read about this in an article in the i newspaper, which explained why this was necessary: […]
Understanding the demographic transition
Population is one of the more heated areas of the sustainability debate. There are those who see population as enemy number one when it comes to the environment. The more of us there are, the greater our ecological impact will be. Unless reined in by deliberate policy, the emerging middle classes of developing countries will […]
The real fuel poverty challenge
With gas prices rising in Britain this month, there’s been a renewed round of discussion on energy poverty. That’s defined as spending more than 10% of household income on energy, and it’s a growing problem. This is important, and I’ve written plenty about it in the past, but it pales when compared to the global […]
A short film on climate change and hunger
It’s always world something day. Did I mention that yesterday was World Hand Washing Day? (Yep, on Twitter, and it’s more important than you might initially think) Today is World Food Day, and I’m going to post this short animation from Tearfund. It draws the connection between hunger and climate change, and asks how we […]
Is Islamic extremism a development problem?
All the violent protests this week have been in the poor Islamic countries, not the rich ones.
How expensive is your broadband?
What if your broadband subscription cost £15,000? For some, the internet is still an unaffordable luxury.
The long road to 0.7%
The EU countries have repeatedly pledged to increase their overseas development aid to 0.7% of gross national income. That’s a specific figure and isn’t plucked from the air – 0.7% of the developed world income is the estimated cost to fund the Millennium Development Goals. So how are we doing? Here are the results from […]
Hole in the Wall IT for the poor
In 1999 Dr Sugata Mitra conducted a rather quirky educational experiment. His research institute was next to a slum district, and he cut a hole in the wall and installed a public computer terminal with an internet connection. It was unsupervised and free to use, with no instructions, just monitored through a remote desktop and […]
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