Early in 2006, I decided that what The Guardian‘s technology section really needed was a campaign. Campaigns energise readers. But a campaign about what? I’ve always liked statistics. So obviously it had to be about data. I already felt that the UK government’s mapping data should be available to us all for free, as it […]
Ever since the news broke that Sweden was experimenting with a six-hour working day, at an elderly care centre in the city of Gothenburg, the world has been watching, agog. Would it save money by increasing productivity and reducing workplace sickness? Could this be a new model for progressives around the world to strive for? […]
America’s immigration policy has got the country to where it is today, for better or worse. It created a diverse and innovative nation that has pushed human civilisation forward. It also brought us President Trump, and with him, a more heated debate about immigration. But rather than continuing to shout over one another and refusing […]
For parents, their child’s education, safety and upbringing are among their biggest concerns. But what families need and when they need it, varies dramatically. Some families with one working parent and one stay-at-home parent may only need childcare for a couple of hours a week, where carers simply provide parent-like supervision for limited periods of […]
In Vanuatu, they’re taking that hippie mantra of only eating locally seriously. “A group of South Pacific islands,” reports the Guardian, “are banning foreign junk food imports in favour of an all-local, organic diet as a way to combat future health problems.” To which we must contrast the desperate straits facing us here in the UK, where […]
The UK economy has begun 2017 in fairly rude health. The Office for National Statistics estimates that GDP grew by 0.6 per cent in the final three months of 2016, just the same as in each of the second and third quarters of the year. The first three months of 2016 had seen only 0.3 […]
Over the past few months, many people have tried to come up with an explanation for the rise of populism and nationalism – the way the rhetoric of Trump and Sanders, Le Pen and Wilders, seems to resonate throughout the world. But there’s one contributory factor that people are reluctant to admit to: that the […]
Sometimes, lots of little stories boil down into one big one. And behind all of the political turmoil in recent years, all of the fretting about globalisation and automation and rising inequality, lies a simple fact: workers are being screwed. Put more elegantly, what is happening in the economy is that the balance of reward […]
Donald Trump has hardly taken his hand off the Bible upon which he took the presidential oath to preserve, protect and defend the U.S. Constitution, and he has already begun to radically and rapidly transform the direction of the American government. Taking up Barack Obama’s pen, he has signed a series of executive orders. Several […]
In Kenya, the birthplace of mobile money and agency banking, we are all well aware of how helpful financial tools can be in the lives of low income people. Financial service providers have given millions of people safe options to save and pay, harnessed social networks for remittances that help vulnerable families cope with emergencies, […]
What connects Martin Luther King and Milton Friedman? George McGovern and Friedrich Hayek? The Adam Smith Institute and John McDonnell? The answer is that all are fans of the universal basic income – a policy that is suddenly the hottest thing in town. Finland is trying it. Scotland may follow suit. Silicon Valley bigwigs, including […]
Over the years, the West has spent many millions to help stabilise the Horn of Africa, and alleviate the grinding poverty of many of its residents. In 2011-13, the EU pledged 260 million euros in development aid for South Sudan, and the US has also invested substantial amounts of money to stabilize the country. In […]
A confession: this isn’t the article I intended to write. I spent the Christmas period devouring Ron Chernow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of George Washington. The plan was to mark the inauguration of America’s most recent President with a comparison to its first. I had lots of cute little concordances noted – for example, that where Trump […]
Liam Byrne tells us today that in order to “end the growing chasm of inequality”, we should rewrite the rules of economics. But that’s not something we get to do. We can no more keep spending when there’s no money left than we can rewrite Newton and fly to the Moon by flapping our arms. […]
In his first speech to the World Economic Forum yesterday, China’s President Xi Jinping turned to Dickens to describe the current predicament facing globalisation: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” The best because Xi believes China’s trade boom is likely to continue, with the economy growing by 6.7 per cent last […]
We are an urban species. Homo urbanis is actively reshaping geopolitics, economics and climate action in the 21st century. And with good reason. While the world’s cities cover just 2 per cent of the earth’s surface, they account for 55 per cent of its population. What’s more, they generate 80 per cent of the world’s […]
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