In the news

Over the last year, the urgency of immediate action to prevent climate change has ascended social, personal and political agendas. Undoubtedly, one reason for this can be summed up as ‘The Greta Thunberg effect’. In one year, since August 2016, this 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl has inspired schoolchildren in five continents to be vocal in drawing Read More

The weekend’s Howdy Modi rally in the US is significant not only because it represents Modi’s ongoing attempts to woo the Indian diaspora, from whom a significant amount of his support comes, but also his reliance on personal diplomacy. This may have won favour with Trump but with other leaders, Modi has had more mixed Read More

Today there is too much hot air amongst our political leaders and not enough action. Climate disruption is tearing the planet apart in ways that have been entirely predicted, yet for which we remain basically unprepared. Climate change continues to be the most significant and urgent matter of our time. Global warming is not ‘natural’. Read More

With climate change once again making headlines around the world, and the global climate strike this Friday, how do we, as ordinary people, make sense of what’s happening and why does this matter? Kristina Diprose, one of the authors of Climate Change, Consumption and Intergenerational Justice: Lived Experiences in China, Uganda and the UK has Read More

David Cameron’s recent description of the government’s management of the Brexit process as “restrictive and counter productive” could equally well have been applied to his government’s programme of austerity, which started in 2010 – and for most of us, is still rumbling on. After almost a decade of austerity, during which growth has sputtered, poverty Read More

Of the nineteen UK governments since the Second World War, only two have torn up the rule book and tried to build a better future, instead of simply recycling the tired slogans and policies of the past. The two governments that did try radical change, not always successfully, were those of Clement Attlee in 1945 Read More

In a world marked by political and economic uncertainty, debt appears to be a constant, an enormous dark cloud weighing upon our lives. We are always in debt, struggling to make ends meet, maintain repayments, and balance the books. In the wake of financial crash of 2008 debt was big news and many imagined the Read More

On 5 August, Narendra Modi’s newly reelected government announced that it was revoking Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which conferred special status on the state of Jammu and Kashmir. It declared that it intended to split that state into two parts, render the area of Ladakh and what was left of Jammu and Kashmir Read More

Not for the first time the issue of post A-level results applications to university is in the news, this time as a promise from Labour that it would introduce such a scheme. Norman Gowar, co-author of English Universities in Crisis, highlights how this change would improve participation. Arguments against are familiar and seem feeble: lack Read More

We are in the midst of a pervasive sense of crisis, which for many of us feels overwhelming. The growth of precarious work and automation, accompanied by deep and systemic poverty, along with crises around migration and the environment present an uncertain future. Here, Tom Vickers, author of Borders, Migration and Class in an Age Read More