I have just watched this interview in which Ross Ashcroft of the Renegade Economist talks to author and film-maker David Malone about democracy, economics and more. There’s a lot of good stuff in it but one idea struck me as something really special. David Malone argues that the idea of individual rights – human, constitutional, whatever…
David Cameron published an article yesterday on his LinkedIn page telling us how wonderful his Help To Buy scheme is. What he doesn’t tell you is that Help To Buy is merely an extension of the asset inflation farce that was responsible for the recession, and it can only lead to more misery further down…
Don’t Panic – The Truth About Population. Professor Hans Rosling telling us how it actually is. Entertaining and inspiring. Please share this far and wide.
I wasted a couple of hours today at the live broadcast of Brian Taylor’s Big Debate from Portree on the Isle of Skye. The man himself is a class act – warm, welcoming, and witty – putting both audience and panel at ease. On the panel were three MSPs (Members of the Scottish Parliament) who…
A couple of weeks ago, prompted by lots of activity on facebook, I published this article about Russell Brand’s recent interview with Jeremy Paxman. A few days later I published this one about how our insane system of money-as-debt is slowly driving our economy off a cliff. The Russell Brand article has been viewed by…
In this article in the Daily Mail Richard Littlejohn picks on a single mother in an unpleasant attempt to reinforce the prejudice of his readers against people who claim welfare benefits. In this case he “got the wrang soo by the lug”, as my granny used to say, because his victim turns out to be…
This interview with economist Steve Keen might be hard to follow in places because he talks so quickly but his central message is clear. The growth in private debt (mortgages, loans, credit cards, etc.) over the last 40 years has been more or less exponential, and conventional economic policies have no effective way of stopping…
Here’s a nice short and easy to read article from Tom Streithorst on the economics of supply and demand that highlights the stupidity of austerity in the midst of a recession. It begins with a little homily on the inevitability of a universal basic income, which is always good to see.
The notion of creating new money and giving it in equal share to the citizens of the UK may sound ridiculous, but this article by Mehdi Hasan in The Huffington Post explains that the idea isn’t as radical as it sounds. For an economy to thrive money must be available and mobile so creating and…
Over the last couple of days my Facebook page has been plastered with posts and comments about Russell Brand’s interview with Jeremy Paxman, which has left me a bit perplexed because there was nothing remotely illuminating in Russell’s rant. His frustration with our dysfunctional political and economic systems is genuine and understandable but if he had…
Views From The Boatshed 