By Rethinking Poverty
07 Jan 2021
2020 has been a year like no other in living memory, with two months pre-Covid and the rest of the year forming the first part of the post-Covid era.... Read More
By Andrew Milner, Lisa Jordan and Stef van Dongen
30 Dec 2020
As the pandemic has stood the world on its head, one of the debates which has been thrown wide open is that of the future of the economy. PSJP... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
17 Dec 2020
Degrowth, or he end of growth is not the end of the world, says Parrique. ‘It can be the beginning of many worlds.’ … Basically, degrowth means a decline of... Read More
By Holly Barrow
25 Nov 2020
The Covid-19 pandemic has once more highlighted that the UK’s social security system is in dire need of reform. Chancellor Rishi Sunak himself seemingly identified its shortcomings, as he... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
11 Nov 2020
When we think about building back better, we are thinking about power and how we make decisions, said Compass’s Frances Foley, introducing a webinar on citizens assemblies called Deliberating and doing:... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
28 Oct 2020
What is a caring economy? And why invest in it now? ‘Building a caring economy’ was the topic of a New Economics Foundation (NEF) briefing, hosted jointly with the Women’s... Read More
By Barry Knight
21 Oct 2020
My favourite history book, The Sleepwalkers, tells the story of how the great powers drifted into the First World War without reason or regard to consequences. This is a... Read More
By Michael Orton
30 Sep 2020
Readers of Rethinking Poverty are warmly invited to give their views on proposals for a better social security (welfare benefits) system. The proposals are from a project called the... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
02 Sep 2020
Lockdown has seen huge changes in the world of work – most notably the rise of home working. With the furlough scheme coming to its end and the government... Read More
By Andrew Webster
19 Aug 2020
‘Indeed, the one thing these prophecies had in common was that, ultimately, all were reassuring. Unfortunately, though, the plague was not.’ ‘The truth is that nothing is less sensational... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
08 Apr 2020
Since the last Talking Points went out, our world has been completely turned upside down. The country is in lockdown. Nothing is certain. March Talking Points is inevitably focused... Read More
By Stuart Cartland
26 Mar 2020
The current national and global crisis in which we find ourselves has exposed the myth that a society based upon individualism can work, flourish and be sustainable. We can... Read More
By Neal Lawson
20 Mar 2020
Most of us have experienced nothing like this before. It is strange, forbidding and dislocating to a degree probably only experienced by those alive in the early 1940s. Events... Read More
By Barry Knight
15 Jan 2020
‘I feel in complete shock. At the end I thought my heart had stopped.’ So read a text sent by a friend of mine as she left the cinema... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell and Barry Knight
07 Jan 2020
What is the society we want? There is widespread agreement across the political spectrum that capitalism is in crisis and we need a new way of doing things. ‘Read the... Read More
19 Nov 2019
The Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) has launched ‘The manifesto for local economies’, setting out a vision for ‘how the next government should create local economies that serve... Read More
By Anna Fowlie
13 Nov 2019
To coincide with the 10 year anniversary of the publication of the Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, the Carnegie UK Trust... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
06 Nov 2019
This month’s Talking Points looks at a variety of ideas for improving people’s lives – from good architecture to kindness and a newly woven social fabric. We also look... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
06 Nov 2019
On the 4 November, economist Ann Pettifor was speaking at the London School of Economics. ‘The Case for the Green New Deal’ was the title of her fascinating talk,... Read More
05 Nov 2019
The IPPR and WWF have published a collection of essays, Putting people at the heart of the green transition, which sets out what ‘a Green New Deal (GND) could... Read More
By Global Fund for Community Foundations
01 Nov 2019
The upcoming “Pathways to Power” Symposium aims to take discussions around #ShiftThePower to the next stage by developing strategies to make the idea a reality. One promising approach is... Read More
24 Oct 2019
A new report from Carnegie UK, Public policy and the infrastructure of kindness in Scotland, explores the decision to put kindness at the centre of the Scottish National Performance... Read More
11 Oct 2019
Green New Deal for Nature, by Simon Lewis, of University College London and University of Leeds, forms part of Common Wealth’s Green New Deal (GND) series. The report advocates... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
02 Oct 2019
The introductory statement to the UN Climate Action Summit on 23 September 2019 makes chilling reading, though it insists that there are still solutions available: ‘The last four years... Read More
26 Sep 2019
Johanna Bozuwa and Carla Skandier of Democracy Collaborative have contributed to Common Wealth’s series on the Green New Deal with their piece, Shifting Ownership for the Energy Transition in... Read More
By Jon Edwards
25 Sep 2019
The core premise of Neal Lawson’s ‘45° Change’ is that the post-1945 welfare state approach to dealing with societal challenges has broken down. The neoliberal, market-driven system that has... Read More
24 Sep 2019
Last month we announced the launch of Common Wealth’s Green New Deal project, a series of reports that will aim to serve as a ‘comprehensive road map for a... Read More
19 Sep 2019
A new report, How to achieve shorter working hours, commissioned by the Labour Party and written by Lord Skidelsky, was published last week. It argues that ‘a reduction in... Read More
By Bob Rhodes
18 Sep 2019
As part of its Manifesto for Social Care Reform, the Centre Welfare Reform proposes a radical reinvention of social services and the reintegration and refocusing of social work on... Read More
12 Sep 2019
Common Wealth have published another report in their Green New Deal series, this time looking at political movements and institutions. Written by Miatta Fahnbulleh of the New Economics Foundation,... Read More
10 Sep 2019
The Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) have published the second provocation in their new series, ‘CLES on… regeneration’, arguing regeneration needs recalibration ‘in order to root the development... Read More
04 Sep 2019
The Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) have launched a new series of provocations, ‘CLES on…’, drawing on their thirty years’ experience of ‘working to develop stronger local economics... Read More
By Mathew Lawrence
03 Sep 2019
Executive summary Tinkering at the margins of an economic model driving environmental breakdown is guaranteed to deepen the climate emergency. To thrive, only a systemic response to a systems... Read More
By Chris Williams
28 Aug 2019
The UK’s 25 year environment plan — to lead the world in the ‘natural capital approach’ — contains many bold statements about the capacity of this approach to produce positive change for nature. One aim is... Read More
By Lukasz Krebel
01 Aug 2019
Today the ONS has published its latest GDP statistics, showing that UK GDP grew by 0.3% in the three months to May 2019. This monthly release typically attracts widespread media... Read More
By Hannah Ormston
25 Jul 2019
Now, perhaps more than ever, our peer-to-peer interactions, social networks and relationships, matter. The importance of personal agency and control in the decisions that affect our lives should not... Read More
29 May 2019
A new paper from Autonomy UK, The Ecological Limits of Work: on carbon emissions, carbon budgets and working time, written by Philipp Frey, explores working hours and productivity in... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
21 May 2019
The devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have all three put wellbeing at the heart of their approach – codifying their values and goals within wellbeing frameworks... Read More
27 Mar 2019
Compass, with support from Friends Provident Foundation, have published a new report, Basic Income for All: From Desirability to Feasibility. Authored by Stewart Lansley and Howard Reed, it presents... Read More
21 Mar 2019
Compass has released a report, 45º Change: Transforming Society from Below and Above, authored by Neal Lawson and supported by Rethinking Poverty. It explains the theory of 45 Degree... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell and Barry Knight
23 Jan 2019
Here, we follow up the article by Neal Lawson and Caroline Hartnell on ‘45 Degree Change’ and examine initiatives identified by Aditya Chakrabortty in a series of articles called... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty, Compass, TCPA, University of Hull, UCL
26 Sep 2018
What would a good society look like and how can we achieve it? As described in yesterday’s blog, a small group of people got together in Letchworth Garden City... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty, Compass, TCPA, University of Hull, UCL
25 Sep 2018
A small group of people got together in Letchworth Garden City on 26 and 27 July. With UK politics in a worse state than perhaps ever before, the aim... Read More
By Julia Unwin
14 Sep 2018
Scrapping top-down attempts at building a good society and shifting the power to those people who we seek to help are some of the main ideas put forward by Barry... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
29 May 2018
‘Focusing on basic services, such as housing, food, communications and transport, is, we conclude, far more effective at driving down the cost of living than spending the same money... Read More
By Chris Goulden
11 May 2018
Universal basic income (UBI), or citizens’ basic income, is one of the ideas put forward in Barry Knight’s book Rethinking Poverty: What makes a good society? as a ‘promising area for... Read More
By Peter Hetherington
26 Feb 2018
Peter Hetherington finds compelling arguments in a recent book challenging preconceived ideas about the role and responsibility of government and the assumptions of both the political right and left.... Read More
