Very interesting report in the Telegraph this morning, seemingly briefed by the Treasury, on Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s thinking ahead of the 31 October fiscal statement, billed by Hunt on Monday last week as the occasion for “eye-watering” cuts. Media reports following duly followed in turn, threatening a return to the bad old days of George […]
Expectations management and austerity 2.0 Read More »
Politics is about people, about our different views and our understandings about people – about what motivates them, why they behave in the way they do, and what will most help or hinder them. In the spring of 2016 I published a short book titled: ‘A Better Politics: How Government Can Make Us Happier’ which
Let them eat growth? Read More »
The Governor of the Bank of England, speaking at an IMF conference yesterday evening: Bank of England, as reported before breakfast this morning: In between time, the pound had done this: Modern central banking is mostly about the communications of modern central banking. Take former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi’s declaration that he would
What is the Bank of England playing at? Read More »
New figures from the Progressive Economy Forum show that poorest households will still be paying half their income in energy bills under government price guarantee. Shocking new figures, released today by the Progressive Economy Forum, show that the poorest households in Britain will still be left paying almost half (47%) their disposable income in energy
New PEF Research Shows Energy Price Guarantee Failure Read More »
The main rate of inflation in the UK, the Consumer Price Index, fell from July’s 40-year peak of 10.1% to 9.9% in August. This reflects the impact of sharp declines in the global price of oil over the summer, which fed into the falling price of motor fuel. However, food prices are continuing to rise,
Inflation down slightly, but the crisis continues Read More »
The Progressive Economy Forum is undertaking an “Austerity Audit” to assess the economic impact of austerity policies pursued by the Coalition and then Conservative governments from 2010-19.
Call for Evidence: PEF’s “Austerity Audit” Read More »
The IMF reports that inflation globally continues to be driven by rises in the price of food and energy: Food and energy are the main drivers of this inflation… Indeed, since the start of last year, the average contributions just from food exceed the overall average rate of inflation during 2016-2020. In other words, food
Global inflation still driven by food and energy prices. Recession is the likely result. Read More »
By Guy Standing We are living in an age of chronic uncertainty, in which crises pile into one another, plunging millions of people deeper into insecurity, impoverishment, stress and ill-health. There was the financial crash of 2008, a decade of austerity, a series of six pandemics culminating in Covid, with more to follow, and now
An Era of Chronic Uncertainty: Time for Basic Income Read More »
The global privatisation of the sea For most of human history, the sea has been seen as a commons. In the Justinian Codex of AD529-534 – regarded universally as the base of common law – four types of property were defined – private, state, nobody’s (res nullius) and commons (res communes). The sea was firmly
The Blue Commons: Combating Rentier Capitalism in the Sea Read More »
As we emerge from the end of the pandemic – to the extent that there will ever be an end to it – we find ourselves in an economic crisis unprecedented in recent history. This crisis is not abstract, and neither is it like the weather: our living standards are declining rapidly, with millions likely
We desperately need an alternative to the orthodox economic consensus Read More »
