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...
Initiatives
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...
Redefining ultra-micro economics
New Weather is excited to be launching this new project in partnership with Friends Provident Foundation which we hope will help heal the rift between the emerging ultra-local economic sector and mainstream economic policy makers. The underlying problem is...
Towards the next devolution of power
What if Andrew Adonis and George Osborne are right? What if the key question for re-balancing the economy (not a phrase Adonis used) was to force through a major new devolution of economic power to the city regions? What if Michael Heseltine’s was right in his 2012...
The next devolution is economic
We have been working with the New Banking group, and the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd, to develop practical policy detail about how to develop a more effective banking system in the UK - one that works for SMEs and local economies. The present banking system is...
Imagining an ethical Wonga
The central conundrum about payday loan companies is that they are designed to help people through what are intended to be unusual and temporary periods of financial difficulty. Long-term and repeated use of payday loans is seriously expensive. Yet the business...
Towards a new kind of banking
There is a political trend emerging, and it has been a long time coming. Ed Miliband is calling tomorrow for a more diverse banking system. We know his office has been considering an American-style Community Reinvestment Act, which forces the big banks to set up...
How to re-bank the UK effectively
Our associate David Boyle has been working with Baroness Kramer in the House of Lords (before she went into government) to develop implementable approaches to creating a new local banking infrastructure in the UK. You can read the results here (Re-banking pdf), and...
‘National Plan’ to move the UK from the politics of austerity to the age of the Green New Deal
Green New Deal
Thanks to Picfair for the use of this image.