Category: economics
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Another War to End All Wars
I remember I remember a ‘cross over’ lecture by Chomsky, when his reputation as a political commentator was beginning to overtake his reputation as a linguist. (He made one mistake, okay? The ‘language acquisition device’ was a red herring. That’s what academics do – they posit theories to be tested and write about them. The…
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Of Musk and Money
***long read for the weekend*** The enemy of your enemy is not your friend. Nor is the friend of your friend necessarily on the same page as you, and just to make things even more complex, your friends and comrades just might not agree with you… There’s been a noticeable change in the prevailing winds…
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I have made up my mind
I’ve had a few friends, both on social media and in real life, getting cross with me lately for giving consideration to all sorts of odd ideas on the situation in Ukraine. On the one hand yes, I know it’s hard to stay calm when something’s suddenly a hot topic, and all kinds of whacky…
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Beware the Thatcherite Greens
I was in the Green Party once but, it feels like a lifetime ago. Just about all the socialists in the Green Party left to support the Corbyn movement in Labour – it seemed the best opportunity in our lifetime to bring both socialism and environmentalism into our government. Unfortunately, that failed. Many of the…
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UBI Hastings? Let’s work on it
Tonight, I joined the inaugural meeting of the UBILab Hastings – becoming part of the growing network of people nationwide, looking into how Universal Basic Income might be made to work for all of us. The idea is to provide a stable, economic floor through which no-one is allowed to fall. The UBILab networks include…
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About those energy bills
20% … 30% … someone just said 40% … someone just said *what*? How much have your latest bills gone up? Can *you* afford it? Can you fight the energy companies alone? No, so – Please don’t let this pass, please don’t let it slip off the agenda. People will be losing their homes and…
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Does end-game capitalism appear as a gas bill?
We have quite simply decided not to risk putting the heating on any time, ever. It’s jumpers over jumpers, socks over socks and if there is another really cold night – I don’t know, go in the garden and huddle round the bonfire bin? Slow-cook some vegetables and sit round the oven? Himself doesn’t look…
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Of miners, gory horrors, and socialism at the sharp end
We were in Wales for other reasons, and in Trehafod in particular only because there happened to be accommodation available there. Well, they say the best lessons are those learned by accident. We had a free morning, and went for a coffee in the Trehafod mining museum. I knew Welsh coalmining was interesting, dreadful and…
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UBI or bust
A few years ago now, we in Hastings had a visit from Guy Standing, talking about various aspects of the New Economics. One of the ideas that interested me was UBI (universal basic income). I see it doing the rounds again now. Our own borough council have recently been taking steps to get involved, with…
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Politics: the viral divide
I begin to think the virus blame-game is even more misleading than the rest of the political hot potatoes put together. Sham lockdown When the whole masks and lockdown thing started, many of us thought it impossible to ‘stop’ a virus in a crowded country where many people still had to go to work. Many…
Kay Green 