Cameron sending out mixed messages on family policy
David Cameron’s speech last week seemed in part to signify a welcome shift away from a focus on marriage alone, reports Kate Bell, formerly of Gingerbread.
Guest
Time to muzzle the legal loan sharks
Lisa Nandy MP talks about the problems caused by the extortionate rate of legal loan sharks and discusses the End Legal Loan Sharks campaign.
Will human rights have their day in Bangladesh?
Claire Leigh asks if the ‘Untouchable’ Dalit communities in India and Bangladesh will finally be embraced by the rest of society.
New campaign to up the ante on bank reform
If banks operated in public interest, there would be no need for a ‘Big Society Bank’, argues Ruth Potts of the new economics foundation.
Tackling climate change requires a just transition to a low carbon economy
When he was environment secretary, David Miliband asserted that only Labour could tackle climate change. He argued that this was because only Labour recognised the need to intervene in markets. The Conservatives’ instincts, he said, would always pre-dispose them to solutions that stopped short of the measures necessary to set our economy on the route towards a low carbon, sustainable future. This, of course, was after the Stern report which had said that climate change was the greatest market failure the world had ever seen.
‘Jilted Generation’ demand “we want jobs”
Shiv Malik is the co-author of the book Jilted Generation: How Britain Has Bankrupted Its Youth. He comments on unpaid interns and unenforced minimum wage legislation.
Urgent action needed to tackle Islamophobia
Sabby Dahlu is Secretary of One Society Many Cultures. She comments on the unreported Islamophobia that still hurts many British Muslims.
Back to the NATO drawing board: How to make our security sustainable
Hannah Brock, of the Oxford Research Group, looks at how a sustainable security strategy would deal more effectively with the root causes of global instability.
Wales bowled over by Cahn’s theory of time-banking
Mark Drakeford examines the parallels between the ‘customer’ experience in the healthcare system and the fate of his beloved Glamorgan County Cricket Club.
Debating financial regulation: The people v the City
As students continued to protest against the commodification of education, and Ireland prepared for a bailout, the New Political Economy Network met to discuss the realities of financial regulation. It was agreed that regulation – or re-regulation – is needed in order to protect against predatory and dehumanising financial practises. Inseparable from regulation, according to Maurice Glasman and Costas Lapavitsas, is the state’s capacity to be a force for social democracy.