Why working parents need European solidarity to secure their rights. In the mid 1970s UK maternity leave arrangements were among the best in Europe. Progress ground to a halt in 1979 with the election of a Conservative Government, which immediately doubled the...
Initiatives
Europe IN 250 Words: Save the Veto
The writer and independent MP A. P. Herbert was walking along the Thames at Westminster in July 1940, the day France surrendered to the Nazis, when someone shouted at him from a barge: “Hurray! No allies!” The truth was that this idea, that Britain should no longer...
Europe IN 250 Words: Brexiteers’ Dream
Brexiteers dream, one imagines, of waking up on June 24th to a land free of alien interference and pesky laws made by Johnny Foreigner, where we can decide who is entitled to have human rights, eat all the bendy bananas we like, and raise a glass of English ale in a...
Europe IN 250 Words: Introduction
This week the New Weather Institute kicks off a series of short arguments for staying in Europe. Europe IN 250 Words is written by a variety of different people covering the subjects they care about and are fearful for, if we should vote Brexit. Our writers will be...
The progressive economic case to remain in Europe
The New Weather Institute works with the network, Economists for Rational Economic Policies (EREP), which explores the progressive case for the UK remaining in the European Union in its new publication, “Remain for Change: Building European solidarity for a democratic...
Why policy-makers don’t see the next local economic revolution coming
New Weather has published a book including eight important narratives to explain the next local economic revolution. Instead of waiting for economic salvation by outside investors or Whitehall grants, local people are beginning to innovate themselves. The trouble is,...
Towards a people-powered prosperity
“Manchester is to get its own directly elected mayor with powers over transport, housing, planning and policing in a devolution deal worth more than £1bn.” Guardian, 3 Nov 2014 The trouble with economic recovery is that someone else always has to do it - the...
Briefing the election candidates
The underlying causes of an unbalanced economy
We don't live in a very literate age when it comes to economics. There are still people in Whitehall, even the Treasury, who believe that somehow – if cities decline or fall, if one place succumbs to grinding poverty – that is it the ‘market’ that did it. However...
Pattern for the people
Does pattern have to be superficial and imitative or can it capture a fleeting moment, the fingerprint of a place or even the spirit of a person? This is the idea behind my latest collection of prints by Dora, made with friends on my local allotments on Spa Hill in...