While corporations are busy marketing themselves as environmentally responsible global citizens, scientists warn that global ecological systems are severely destabilised. The confusion created by the gap between frightening scientific reports and reassuring messages from advertising and corporate media provides an excuse to continue shopping, watching TV and generally ignoring escalating […]

Ever asked your mum if she did anything more constructive in the Thatcher years than dressing up in ra-ra skirts and pixie boots and dancing to Duran Duran? It’s a reasonable bet that some people participating in Occupy London today are sons and daughters of the brave women who camped […]

If the festive season is any indication, storytelling would seem to play an important part in our lives. In keeping with tradition, Christmas Day was, for many, a time for reflection on a mythical story of humankind. A story of outlandish characters and unlikely happenings. Of vice, virtue, struggle and […]

2011 was the International Year of Forests, with the theme ‘Forests for People’. I think more and more people are coming to understand the role that forests play in the health of our planet, but I am not convinced that the threats are abating yet. At the beginning of 2011, […]

Privacy isn’t dead. But technology is changing our perception of what is private. At present, technology takes power away from the user to control their privacy – in exactly the same way as blanket CCTV does. Our biggest challenge is making people realise that their privacy is important – and […]

These days, if you sit down to watch the news, you’re almost guaranteed to hear someone talk about ‘the market’. ‘The markets are down today’, they’ll say, or ‘the market won’t like that’. More and more frequently it’s that ‘the markets demand action’, as the threat of recession looms. In […]

Andreas Whittam-Smith recently wrote about the possibility of ‘a group of like-minded citizens running for election for one term only’ in order to bring about the requisite change that is patently needed within British politics and which, it seems increasingly clear, is not forthcoming from career politicians within the bowels of […]

Suppose someone were to describe a small country that provided free education through university for all of its citizens, transportation for school children, and free health care – including heart surgery – for all. You might suspect that such a country is either phenomenally rich or on the fast track […]

For decades leading up to 2011, the year of great occupations, there has been a different kind of occupation. Our collective imagination has been occupied by a lie. We have internalised the mantra of the status quo – “There Is No Alternative” – that is continually repeated, both explicitly and […]

We are What we Buy. Political Consumerism as Everyone’s Business At the heart of the global Occupy movement is the call for radical change based on a rethinking of our current system’s priorities. A central concern in this regard is to reveal the hidden economic and ecological costs of a […]