Category: economics
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What’s a fiscal black hole, and how do you fix it?
It’s what you get when the magic money-tree suffers a crop failure. I don’t know whether our old MP Amber Rudd was the first one to claim “there is no magic money tree”, but she was most definitely one of those stashing their income in tax havens whilst telling us there was no magic solution…
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What do puberty blockers and statins have in common?
The book Why We Eat (Too Much) is three years old now, but there’s a recent edition with an added chapter about COVID. The book tells how the author, Andrew Jenkinson, a surgeon who, after working in a bariatric clinic (specializing in last-ditch treatments for obesity), decided that our medical world doesn’t know enough about…
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Feminists and socialists need this book
I knew Hannah Barnes’ Time to Think was an important book. So many people with good brains and good hearts have been worried about what the current fashion for gender ideology is doing to our kids. Reading reviews and articles about the book, I could see Barnes’ investigation into what happened at the Tavistock was…
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Today I helped to destroy our planet
I’m sorry. It’s just the way the day went. It was gone 7pm, and I needed to be back home, having bought two pillows. It was Morrison’s or nothing, and all they had that I could afford were microfibre bottles – I mean pillows. Those ones made out of ‘recycled’ plastic bottles. They boast about…
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Slow-burn rebellion
Seen those complaints on social media that the people aren’t rebelling? They think we’re a nation of quitters, or that we’re all duped by the Tories or the fake opposition. Tell them we haven’t given up. Tell them to come on out and join in – there is so much going on lately. Got depressed…
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How did our country become “Rip off Britain?”
Distractions, distractions We’re so good at distractions. Somehow, there’s always something to stop us thinking about what we need to deal with. Where was our attention, when Jimmy Savile waggled the old eyebrows and said “I’m hiding in plain sight”? Where was our attention when Johnny Rotten warned everyone about him? Where was our attention…
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Postman Pat and the sweet shop lady
Two treasured memories from my childhood. Where I lived when I was a kid, the sweet shop on the corner was also a Post Office. When I moved to Hastings, I used to use the Post Office counter in the bookshop on the seafront — and I still prefer the one in that little supermarket…
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The failed ideology of “keep the change”
Picture this: a hard-pressed mum, busy trying to manage the budget for the family, gives her kid a £50 note and says “go buy a carton of milk and keep the change.” The kid comes back with the milk, and two carrier bags stuffed with £47.50worth of sweets, biscuits and cakes and some friends, then…
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What do we want…?
Today, 1st February 2023, the NEU teachers join in the #CostOfLivingCrisis wave of strikes, and this morning in Hastings, all the trade unions and other groups who answered the call #HastingsDemandsBetter gathered in support. Himself and I looked in at Hastings Station, where there was an ASLEF picket line, passed the government buildings where the…
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Imagine a different world
Imagine a health service where our top-quality, highly trained A&E nurses and medical practitioners are well paid, and have shorter working hours than average, because of the exceptionally high mental and physical demands of the job, and because we have plenty of them, and we value them all. Imagine a health service where consultants don’t…
Kay Green 