Economy

In the early 1980s, to Margaret Thatcher’s annoyance, union reps and managers at the steelworks in Port Talbot agreed a strategy to save the plant.  As a result, Port Talbot was spared the post-industrial blight visited upon most of Britain’s ex-industrial towns.  Now in private hands, and despite periodic crises, …

It is mid-November, the autumn has been unusually mild, and the NHS has just declared its first crisis of the 2021-22 winter season.  Across the UK, emergency ambulance services are failing because ambulances which should be on station waiting to respond to emergencies like heart attacks, strokes and road traffic …

On New Year’s Eve 2006-7, something unexpected happened.  For most of the previous two decades, most of the pubs where I live had operated a system where they gave tickets to regular drinkers in order to limit the number of people seeking entry.  This was a problem because one couldn’t …

The Indian government ruffled a few feathers at the COP this morning, by raising the thorny question of the £722bn they were supposed to receive to aid their transition away from fossil fuels.  Because, when all is said and done, the proposed transition is all about money.  Decommissioning the old …

Although introduced to the UK by a Labour government, the National Minimum Wage is closer to the Tory approach to economic policy.  This is because it passes the costs onto someone other than the state immediately.  In this case, Britain’s employers.  Labour governments, in contrast, have generally sought the politically …

A closer look at the supposed explosion in job vacancies provides a clue to the deeper features of a crisis which is only just beginning. The first thing to note is that vacancies are far from even across the economy.

According to Boris Johnson, the economic dislocation which appears to be gathering pace across the UK is merely “a period of adjustment after Brexit.” In Johnson’s formulation, those who would turn the clock back are tacitly in favour of the low-pay and poor working conditions which were encouraged when the …

Western capitalist economies don’t really do shortages.  There are a few stand alone exceptions such as a music festival or a sporting event, where demand so outstrips supply that queues form.  But for the most part – as we saw last week with the eye-watering rise in wholesale gas prices …

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – A well-meaning but not particularly bright left-leaning US politician – made a stir earlier this week by wearing a figure-hugging dress emblazoned with the slogan “Tax the Rich” to the prestigious 2021 Met Gala.  Since the slogan was clearly political, it wasn’t long before the various political …

Perhaps the most contentious – and least asked – question about industrial civilisation concerns its origins.  Why, of all the potential places in the world, should a small group of islands in the northeast Atlantic have emerged as the cradle of industrialisation?  Many possible reasons have been put forward, including: …