Recently I found myself considering the possibility of a World Parliament – something like a cross between the European Parliament and the United Nations – whose members would be elected proportionally to the population of each country. What would the political makeup of such an assembly be? As far as I’m aware no-one has yet bothered to try and work it out,…
Following its recent acquisition of 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Company has cemented its place as one of the largest entertainment companies on the planet. From The Simpsons to Star Wars, chances are that in the last few days you’ve watched, read, or listened to something that Disney owns. This follows a worrying trend of media being concentrated in the hands…
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…
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…
