Sometimes we are enabled to see clearly. A light shines and we have the ‘intake of breath’ moment. One such widely shared moment has been revelations about the brazen breaking by members of the government of their own public safety measures. Another such a moment,...
Initiatives
Where do we begin the transition?
In a recent poll only nine percent of respondents said they wanted to return to the world as it was pre-Covid19. We need to be preparing that new world now. So let us imagine it, this new world. The kindness of neighbours we can leave on one side for the moment - it’s...
National Gardening Leave: an opportunity to reinvent working lives and urban spaces
How often are ideas that once seemed radical and to some, even preposterous, made tame by the turn of events? That is the case now with the suggestion that Britain should experiment with National Gardening Leave, an idea suggested in a 2012 pamphlet I wrote with my...
What are we like? Economic myth and the kindness counter-revolution
It wasn't clear at the time, but a couple of weeks ago I gave what is likely to be my last public talk for a while, reproduced below, at an event called Human Nature, organised by the Experimental Thought Co. Already it seems an age away, but even then our...
Why and how rationing works – lessons from rapid civic mobilisation
Nothing like the current upheavals around the world in the wake of the novel coronavirus, COVID19, have been experienced in peacetime. But societies have mobilised like this during conflict and mass conflagrations. Are there lessons to be learned, and could it lead to...
Time for a genuinely civil, civil contingencies response
Lindsay Mackie and Andrew Simms explore how crises reveal fundamental flaws in underlying political and economic models and call for a new approach It looks like it’s going to be a national emergency, or, in Whitehall terms, a very grave civil contingency. Novel...
Is Australia becoming uninhabitable?
Australia is a canary in the coal mine of global heating, Bill McGuire, Prof of Geophysical & Climate Hazards and New Weather co-director, unpacks the irony that one of the world's least welcoming nations to migrants, could shortly find many of its citizens...
Economic prospects for 2020: New Weather and the FT survey
Each year the Financial Times newspaper investigates the UK’s upcoming economic prospects with a survey of analysts. New Weather's Andrew Simms took part. The survey’s predictions often prove highly accurate. Like last year, the uncertainty of Brexit still clouds many...
New Weather co-director Prof Bill McGuire resigns from scientific body over fossil fuel funding – full letter
As reported in this BBC News article, New Weather Institute co-director, Prof Bill McGuire has resigned from the Geological Society over its relationships with fossil fuel companies, following 40 years of membership. In a short introduction and his open resignation...
Knock Three Times – see our new collection of modern folk tales
Buy it here: Knock Three Times - 28 modern folk tales for a troubled world edited by Andrew Simms and Bill McGuire for New Weather. Click here and listen at 35 mins 15 secs to BBC Radio 4's coverage of Knock Three Times "All you can talk about is money and fairytales...