Society

When it comes to the origins of the term “fake news,” people fall into two broad camps.  The first holds that the term was coined by former US president Donald Trump to dismiss critics in the establishment media.  The second, smaller group, insist that the term has been around for …

Humanity faces a bottleneck of crises which threaten the collapse of industrial civilisation.  Of these, most people are only aware of climate change, which most believe can be solved via electrification and a range of simple changes to our lifestyles. But climate change is just one of myriad crises, including: …

It has been called “America’s Chernobyl.”  In short, following the failure to maintain rail side detectors, a freight train containing several tanks of vinyl chloride – a precursor of PVC – experienced an over-heated axle causing a train fire and a derailment close to the town of East Palestine, Ohio.  …

It is 64 years since Michael Young’s satire, The Rise of the Meritocracy was published.  It was, no doubt, a response to the aspirations around the post-war expansion of education.  The school leaving age had been raised, and an expansion of grammar schools provided a route for working class kids to access higher education.  This social mobility had been accompanied by geographical mobility too, as kids from the old industrial regions of the UK went off to study in the affluent university towns of the south of England, and then later stayed there when they found work.

In 2002, I was invited to the inaugural meeting of the Health and Wellbeing Council for Wales.  At the meeting, two esteemed academics – Peter Townsend and Derek Wanless – presented papers on the future of health and social care in Wales.  Their reports were stark.  Wales had, for many …

In 1969, Swiss-American psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published On Death and Dying – a book based upon her observations while working with terminally ill patients.  Her broad proposition was that, faced with their impending demise, people move through five emotional-mental states – DABDA – Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.  Although …

In the aftermath of the 2016 peasants’ revolt, in which Britain accidentally found itself falling out of the European Union while Americans looked on with joy and horror as a former TV host accidentally became president, the elites who pull the strings have become increasingly paranoid.  One manifestation of this …

A new prime minister and chancellor attempt to put some economic and political “distance” between them and their predecessors, only to trigger a major economic crisis which leads to electoral defeat and a long period of opposition.  Not – or at least not yet – a story about Truss and …

Ever since the cheese speech went viral, satirists and serious opponents have latched onto the idea that our new “worst prime minister ever” is intellectually challenged.  For sure, her inability to find her way out of her own press conference, and more alarmingly, her apparent belief that Ukraine was an …