When you were at school, did you ever see a teacher cry? If you did, I am certain you remember it well. Teachers can appear monolithic, distant figures in our memory – we blithely talk about this good teacher, this bad teacher, this teacher who hated me, but those moments when the cracks show can be deeply affecting. We all know teachers,…
Freedom to live, not freedom to exist, work and then die In a bizarre twist of fate, Jeremy Corbyn was the only candidate during the 2015 leadership election to defend the Blair government’s spending record. This is demonstrative of how, regardless of faction, no Labour Party figure is showing a full appreciation of the lessons of the past. This has been true…
When Hamilton came to London back in 2017 it made headlines in the theatre world, and not just because it entered the restored Victoria Palace Theatre with a Broadway parent production which had won eleven Tony Awards. The musical retelling of Ron Chernow’s biography of American founding father Alexander Hamilton sent shockwaves in British theatre because its casting call advertised specifically for…
The financial crisis which began in the late 2000s had many causes. But for most people the first effect they would have felt was the mass freezing up of credit lines. In the decade since, there have been many proposals on how to make financial markets better serve the interests of the general public. Few, however, have got to the heart of…
Shoes off, tie loosened, keyboard clacked. It’s been another long day at the office, and Mark’s preferred relaxant is a classic amongst PC gamers. Double click. He boots up the Sims 2, in the vain hope that the virtual world the Carney family inhabits can take his mind off of climate, productivity, and other economic crises. He’s an expert at the game.…
It was under Clement Attlee’s great postwar Labour government that the United Kingdom, in the early stages of what was to become the Cold War, conducted a successful atomic weapon test and established itself as a nuclear power. The aftershock also caused a seismic rift in the Labour Party. Lifelong disarmament campaigner Michael Foot publicly fell out with fellow giant of the…
IS CAPPING INCOME THE ANSWER TO BRITAIN’S WEALTH GAP CRISIS? The wealth gap crisis in Britain needs to be addressed urgently. In February 2019, the Office for National Statistics published their report on the average household income in the financial year ending 2018. It revealed that the average income for the poorest fifth of the UK decreased by 1.6%, while, the richest…
Autonomy’s report “The Shorter Working Week: A Radical and Pragmatic Proposal” is the type of document I was screaming out for when I wrote my first piece for the Social Review. Its title embodying the exact sentiment that I was trying to convey in For a Four Day Week. A shorter working week isn’t merely a policy confined to high-minded idealism, it…
